The government of South Africa declares Afrikaans an official language.
Afrikaans (UK: , US: , English meaning: African) is a West Germanic language spoken in South Africa, Namibia, and, to a lesser extent, Botswana, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. It evolved from the Dutch vernacular of Holland (Hollandic dialect) spoken by the European (Dutch, French, and German) settlers and their slaves in South Africa, where it gradually began to develop distinguishing characteristics during the course of the 18th century. It is considered by most linguists to be partially, rather than fully, a creole language. Afrikaans linguistics researchers maintain that Afrikaans is only partially creole.Although Afrikaans has adopted words from other languages, including German and the Khoisan languages, an estimated 90 to 95% of the vocabulary of Afrikaans is of Dutch origin. Therefore, differences with Dutch often lie in the more analytic-type morphology and grammar of Afrikaans and a spelling that expresses Afrikaans pronunciation rather than standard Dutch. There is a large degree of mutual intelligibility between the two languages, especially in written form.With about seven million native speakers in South Africa, or 13.5% of the population, it is the third most spoken language in the country. Estimates of the total number of Afrikaans speakers range between 15 and 23 million. It has the widest geographic and racial distribution of all the 11 official languages of South Africa and is widely spoken and understood as a second or third language. It is the majority language of the western half of South Africa—the provinces of the Northern Cape and Western Cape—and the first language of 75.8% of Coloured South Africans (4.8 million people), 60.8% of White South Africans (2.7 million people), 4.6% of Indian South Africans (58,000 people), and 1.5% of Black South Africans (600,000 people).