The Most Common Afrikaans Words, and the Ones You Already Know

The most common Afrikaans words are die (the), nie (not), ek (I), is (am, are, is), het (to have) and jy (you). Those six open a ranked list of 2,915 Afrikaans words, and a surprising number of the words further down it are ones an English speaker can read without a dictionary: help, bed, week, warm, winter, radio.

Below are the top words with their meanings, the everyday words you need first, the words people most often look up, and how much Afrikaans shares with Dutch and German. Every word comes from our free Afrikaans word list, so you can check any of them yourself.

#Where this list comes from

The ranking comes from the OpenSubtitles 2018 frequency lists (via the FrequencyWords project): how often each word turns up in film and TV subtitles, which is about as close as open data gets to everyday spoken language. English meanings come from Wiktionary. Anything that has no Afrikaans Wiktionary entry was dropped, which is what filters out character names and stray English. That leaves 2,915 words, all with an English meaning. The data is shared under CC BY-SA 4.0; the example sentences quoted below are from Tatoeba.

Two things to know before you read the tables:

• The meanings are matched automatically. Usually that works. Sometimes it picks a rarer sense of the word, and where that happened in the top rows we left the row out rather than print a misleading meaning. We say which ones below.
• The list is lowercase and strips apostrophes. That matters for one very common word, covered in the next section.

#The 20 most common Afrikaans words

The gaps in the rank column are rows we skipped. Rank 7 is n with the meaning “N”, which is not a word at all: it is ’n, the Afrikaans word for “a” or “an”, with its apostrophe stripped. You can see it in one of the list’s example sentences, Hy is ’n ou man (He’s an old man). Rank 8, dit, has the unhelpful meaning “referring to the context”. Rank 16, te, and rank 20, maar, carry narrow meanings (“indicating excess: too”, “only; solely; just”) that don’t cover how the words are mostly used.

Look at rank 4. The list gives is the meaning “am, are, is”, and that single row tells you something about Afrikaans grammar: the verb does not change for the person. Ek is, jy is, hy is, ons is. The word list page puts it this way: Afrikaans grew out of seventeenth-century Dutch and simplified hard, with no grammatical gender and no verb conjugation to speak of. That is also why die is the only word for “the”.

#Everyday Afrikaans words to learn first

These are the words you’ll use in your first conversation. All of them are in the top 200.

Two of them combine into the phrase you’ll say most: Baie dankie! means “Thank you very much!” And asseblief works the way “please” does in English, tacked onto a request: Sap asseblief is “Juice, please.”

#Common Afrikaans verbs

#People and family

#Husband, boss, path: Afrikaans words people look up

Some of the most searched “in Afrikaans” questions are about single words. Here is what our list has for each, with its rank, so you can see how common the word really is.

A few notes from the data:

• Man means both “man” and “husband.” The list glosses it as husband, but its example sentence is Hy is ’n ou man, “He’s an old man.” Context tells you which. Eggenoot is the formal word, and it is far rarer.
• Pad is a path, a road or a street. Hierdie pad is baie lank means “This road is very long.”
• Baas is the everyday word for boss. Ek wil jou baas sien: “I want to see your boss.”
• Stilte is silence, as in Sy stilte het my verbaas, “His silence surprised me.”

Each of these has its own page listing the word in dozens of languages: husband, boss, path, silence, signal and aim.

#Afrikaans words English speakers already know

Run the list against its own English meanings and a good number of words come out spelled exactly the same. These are from the 2,915-word list, with their ranks:

Same spelling is not the same pronunciation, so expect week and winter to sound different from the English. But on the page, you already know them.

Then there are the near misses, words one letter or one sound away from English: huis (house, #148), vriend (friend, #213), hand (hand, #260), suster (sister, #269), koffie (coffee, #301), welkom (welcome, #321), boek (book, #477), melk (milk, #492), hallo (hello, #498), vis (fish, #754), kat (cat, #878) and maan (moon, #1,138). A few go the other way and turn up in South African English: braai (#1,935), glossed as “to grill meat over an open flame”, and stoep (#2,556), a raised veranda in front of a house.

#How much Afrikaans overlaps with Dutch and German

If you speak Dutch, you have a head start that is easy to measure. Our similar words tool takes the 2,000 commonest words in each of two languages and keeps only the ones written identically and carrying the same meaning in both. It is a strict test, so the counts undersell how close the languages feel, but every word on it is a real match.

For Dutch, the 153 shared words start at the very top: en (and), van (of), dat (that), ja (yes), hier (here), nee (no), alles (everything), niks (nothing), iets (something), wie (who), nooit (never), twee (two), naam (name) and geld (money). The full list is on Afrikaans and Dutch: 153 words that are the same.

German shares 31 by the same test, mostly nouns: familie (family), idee (idea), tante (aunt), bier (beer), glas (glass), boot (boat), kamera (camera), strand (beach), knie (knee). See all of them on Afrikaans and German. Two of the 31 are single letters (a and o), so treat the count as a rough measure.

Eleven words pass the test in all three languages: weg (away), geld (money), brief (letter), idee (idea), tante (aunt), vier (four), bier (beer), glas (glass), boot (boat), restaurant and energie (energy).

(Our lists are lowercase; we capitalize the German noun the way you’d see it in a sentence.) Geld ranks #180 in Afrikaans, #176 in Dutch and #190 in German. As the similar-words page itself warns, a shared word is not proof of a shared root, and the same spelling can still be said quite differently. What the overlap buys you is recognition: a Dutch speaker can read a lot of Afrikaans long before they can say it naturally.

#How to learn the most common Afrikaans words

A frequency list is the fastest way to cover the words you’ll hear most, but only if you get the words off the list and into sentences. For a sense of how many words you need at each stage, see how many words you need to be fluent.

The list and the test are here: the 2,915 most common Afrikaans words and the Afrikaans vocabulary test. If you want to drill them as a game, there is an Afrikaans word game too.

#Practice with a native Afrikaans speaker

Word lists get you recognition. Speaking takes another person. On LangX, Afrikaans is one of the 182 languages you can pick, and matching runs both ways: you see people who speak Afrikaans and are learning a language you speak, so the exchange is useful for both of you.

9:41

Lucía M. Online

Today

Hold any message to correct it — corrections are the most useful thing you can send.

¿Cómo fue tu fin de semana? Cuéntame en inglés si quieres. How was your weekend? Tell me in English if you like. 09:12

Fui a la playa con mi hermana. Hacía mucho calor y yo no llevé agua. 09:14 · Read

Correction from Lucía Hacía mucho calor y yo no llevé agua. Hacía mucho calor y no llevé agua. The «yo» isn't wrong, it just sounds emphatic — like you specifically forgot. 09:15

Message in Spanish…

Corrections are unlimited on every plan, including Free. The free plan starts 5 new conversations a day and gives you 20 in-chat translations a day; replies are unlimited. You can also send voice messages, which matters for Afrikaans: the spelling looks friendly, and the pronunciation is where you’ll want feedback. Voice and video calls work in the web app too, and are coming to the iPhone and Android apps. Get the app, or read how to find a language exchange partner first.

#FAQ

#What is the most common word in Afrikaans?

Die, meaning “the.” It is the only definite article in Afrikaans, used with every noun, which is why it tops the list. Next come nie (not), ek (I) and is (am, are, is).

#How do you say husband in Afrikaans?

The everyday word is man (#84 on our list), which also means “man.” The formal word is eggenoot (#1,079). See husband in other languages.

#How many Afrikaans words are on the list?

2,915. The list keeps only words with an Afrikaans dictionary entry, which removes names and stray English, so it is shorter than the 10,000 we have for larger languages. Every word has an English meaning.

#Is Afrikaans the same as Dutch?

No, but they are close. By our strict test, 153 of the 2,000 most common words are spelled the same and mean the same in both. Afrikaans grew out of seventeenth-century Dutch and dropped grammatical gender and most verb endings. For how it compares with other options, see the easiest languages to learn for English speakers.

#Can I learn Afrikaans from a word list alone?

A list is a good start for vocabulary, not for speaking. Learn the top words, then use them in sentences with someone who can correct you.