🇿🇦 → 🇳🇱

How easy is Dutch for Afrikaans speakers?

Going from Afrikaans to Dutch (Nederlands) has a composite linguistic distance of 9% (curated lexical data). Below is the dimension-by-dimension breakdown.

9% distance FSI Cat I (Easiest) — 600–750 hours
Lexical similarity
85%

Shared vocabulary, cognates, and loanwords.

Grammatical distance
86%

Morphology, syntax, word order, cases.

Phonological similarity
100%

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
Het huis staat naast de rivier en heeft een grote tuin.
🇳🇱 Dutch
Die huis staan langs die rivier en het 'n groot tuin.
🇿🇦 Afrikaans
De boeken liggen op de tafel in de kamer.
🇳🇱 Dutch
Die boeke lĂŞ op die tafel in die kamer.

Curated cognates between Afrikaans and Dutch

Word pairs that share a common etymological root — instantly recognisable across both languages:

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 Dutch. No signup.