SeattlePaul wrote:tuny wrote:cat wrote:hi, tuny,
is dit Vlaams of Frans? As dit Vlaams is kan ons Afrikaans praat.
cool, is vlaams dus dan verstaan wij elkaar wel denk ik. dit vind ik wel heel tof
I'm curious; are Afrikaans and Dutch that close? Can you understand each other easily? I would think the lanuages would have diverged a bit over the last 350 years.
i didn't understand that so easily. in Afrikaans it would have been "dis Vlaams, so ons kan mekaar goed verstaan, ek dink."
They have diverged, but Vlaams (Belgian) is supposed to be the closest of the Low Dutch languages to Afrikaans. I think maybe Vlanders was part of Nederland in 1600.
Afrikaans is a minority in this part of the country (Durban, east coast). About 80% or more is English-speaking. (The whites, I mean). The africans here are mostly Zulu. And we have about /nearly 2 million Indians, who's home language is also English (although originally from 4 different ethnic groups.) About half the people here at work are Indians, most of my friends are. So everyone speaks English, but at the same time Zulu is going on around all the time. You see, we never learned it at school, we learned Afrikaans, as a second language. Now we have 11 official languages.
And would you be willing to give us a loose translation in English so we know what the conversation is about?
"cool, it's Vlaams, so we can understand each other well, I think."
Finally, to bring it back on topic (sort of), how do you each say "motorcycle" in your language?
motorfiets - "motorbicycle."
[BTW, the only other language I'm fluent in is Thai; it was in Thailand where I first saw MZ's, from the '60's. Mai mii khon Thai sak khon thii nii (not a single Thai person here). Naa sia dai (too bad).
You must have lived there a while. Apparently they're very nice friendly people. ...I've heard about the nice LBFM.