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🇬🇧 → 🇿🇦

How easy is Afrikaans for English speakers?

Going from English to Afrikaans (Afrikaans) has a composite linguistic distance of 27% (curated lexical data). Below is the dimension-by-dimension breakdown.

27% distance FSI Cat I (Easiest) — 600–750 hours
Lexical similarity
50%

Shared vocabulary, cognates, and loanwords.

Grammatical distance
95%

Morphology, syntax, word order, cases.

Phonological similarity
14%

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:

🇬🇧 English
The water is cold in the winter and warm in the summer.
🇿🇦 Afrikaans
Die water is koud in die winter en warm in die somer.
🇬🇧 English
She loves her brother and her sister very much.
🇿🇦 Afrikaans
Sy is baie lief vir haar broer en haar suster.

Other easy languages for English speakers

The 5 languages with the lowest linguistic distance from English:

Think you can tell them apart?

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