🇿🇦 → 🇸🇦

How easy is Arabic (MSA) for Afrikaans speakers?

Going from Afrikaans to Arabic (MSA) (العربية) has a composite linguistic distance of 87% (heuristic estimate). Below is the dimension-by-dimension breakdown.

87% distance FSI Cat IV (Hardest) — ~2,200 hours

Lexical similarity

Shared vocabulary, cognates, and loanwords.

Grammatical distance

46%

Morphology, syntax, word order, cases.

Phonological similarity

Shared sounds and phoneme inventory.

Writing-system match

Latin → Arabic

Genealogical kinship

Indo-European ↔ Afro-Asiatic

Open the interactive comparison →

Other easy languages for Afrikaans speakers

The 5 languages with the lowest linguistic distance from Afrikaans:

🇳🇱

Dutch

9% distance
🇬🇧

English

27% distance
🇩🇪

German

32% distance
🇱🇺

Luxembourgish

33% distance
🇮🇱

Yiddish

40% distance

Think you can tell them apart?

A quick 3-question check between Afrikaans and Arabic (MSA). No signup.