🇿🇦 → 🇩🇪

How easy is German for Afrikaans speakers?

Going from Afrikaans to German (Deutsch) has a composite linguistic distance of 32% (curated lexical data). Below is the dimension-by-dimension breakdown.

32% distance FSI Cat II — ~900 hours

Lexical similarity

55%

Shared vocabulary, cognates, and loanwords.

Grammatical distance

63%

Morphology, syntax, word order, cases.

Phonological similarity

25%

Shared sounds and phoneme inventory.

Writing-system match

100%

Latin → Latin

Genealogical kinship

100%

Indo-European ↔ Indo-European

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Sample sentences side-by-side

How everyday sentences look in both languages:

🇿🇦 Afrikaans

Der Mann arbeitet auf dem Bauernhof und lebt in einem kleinen Haus.

🇩🇪 German

Die man werk op die plaas en woon in 'n klein huis.

🇿🇦 Afrikaans

Das Wasser und das Brot sind auf dem Tisch.

🇩🇪 German

Die water en die brood is op die tafel.

Other easy languages for Afrikaans speakers

The 5 languages with the lowest linguistic distance from Afrikaans:

Think you can tell them apart?

A quick 3-question check between Afrikaans and German. No signup.