Afrikaans:Sounds and Writing

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Afrikaans
Afrikaans
Family
Sub-family
Language of
Script
Indo-European West Germanic af.png South Africa
NA.png Namibia
Latin

Contents

This needs to be checked

Letters

Letter Pronunciation Comments
A a /ʌ/
B b /b/
C c /k/, /s/ /s/ before e, i and y.
D d /d/
E e /ɛ/, /ə/
F f /f/
G g /x/, /g/ /g/ mostly used in loanwords.
H h /h/
I i /ə/, /i/
J j /j/
K k /k/
L l /l/
M m /m/
N n /n/, /ə/ /ŋ/ before c and k. /ə/ in the indefinite article (ʼn). However /n/ if before a vowel.
O o /ɔ/
P p /p/
R r /r/
S s /s/
T t /t/
U u /ɵ/
V v /f/
W w /v/, /w/ /w/ after consonant.
Y y /əi/
Z z /z/

Extended table

Afrikaans is a language with a lot of diphtongs. The most common ones are listed below. The list also features some consonant clusters and vowels with diacritics.

Letter combination Pronunciation Comments
aa /ɑː/
aai /aːɪ/
au /oʊ/
ch /x/
ê /ɛ/, /æ/ /æ/ in final position only.
ee /ie/
ei /əi/
eu /øː/
ie /iː/
ng /ŋ/
ns - Silent /n/ and the vowel before becomes nasalised.
ô /ɔ/
oe /u/
oo /uo/
ou /aʊ/ Needs checking.
sj /ʃ/
tj /tʃ/, /kj/ /tʃ/ in initial position only.
uu /yː/
ui /œy/

Other characters

In Afrikaans, the indefinite article is an apostrophe followed by a lower case n. This is mostly written as aforementioned, however, there is a Unicode ligature combining the two into one character: ʼn. This character is not represented on the South African keyboards and the article is most of the time written as ’n. The Alt code for the character is 0329.


af.png Afrikaans pages
Introduction · Articles · Pronouns · Sounds and Writing · Vocab
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