Afrikaans grew out of seventeenth-century Dutch, and the two languages are still close enough that a Dutch speaker can read an Afrikaans newspaper and follow most of it. That closeness is a gift — and a trap. Because the vast majority of words do mean the same thing, the handful that quietly shifted meaning are far more dangerous than they would be between unrelated languages. You sail along assuming you understand, and then a familiar-looking word means something you never intended. This page collects the worst offenders for Dutch speakers. (For the English-speaker version, see English false friends.)
amper — 'almost', not 'barely'
This is the classic, and it can completely invert your meaning. In Afrikaans amper means almost, nearly — the thing very nearly happened. In Dutch, amper means barely, scarcely — it only just happened, or hardly happened at all. (Curiously, Afrikaans amper is not even Dutch in origin; it was borrowed from Malay hampir, "near", which is part of why it drifted.)
So Ek het amper geval means, in Afrikaans, I almost fell (but did not). A Dutch speaker hearing their own amper would parse it as I barely fell — the opposite implication. To say barely in Afrikaans, reach instead for net-net (just barely).
| Word | Afrikaans meaning | Dutch meaning |
|---|---|---|
| amper | almost, nearly | barely, scarcely (almost not) |
Ek het amper my trein gemis, maar net betyds opgespring.
I almost missed my train, but jumped on just in time.
Dit is amper vyfuur — ons moet ry.
It's almost five o'clock — we need to go.
aardig — 'strange' (and sometimes 'pleasant'), not simply 'nice'
In Dutch, aardig is a warm, everyday compliment: nice, kind, friendly. In Afrikaans the same word leans the other way — its most common sense is strange, odd, peculiar, and it can also mean queasy / unwell ("ek voel aardig"). It can carry a milder "pleasant" shade in some contexts, but a Dutch speaker who calls a new acquaintance aardig expecting to pay a compliment may well be heard to say the person is odd. To say nice / kind in Afrikaans, use gaaf or vriendelik.
| Word | Afrikaans meaning | Dutch meaning |
|---|---|---|
| aardig | strange, odd; queasy | nice, kind, friendly |
Dis 'n aardige ou — mens weet nooit wat hy gaan doen nie.
He's an odd fellow — you never know what he'll do.
Ek voel 'n bietjie aardig vandag.
I feel a bit off / queasy today.
sop — 'soup', not 'dishwater'
A small one that nonetheless surprises Dutch speakers. Afrikaans sop is straightforwardly soup — what you eat from a bowl. Dutch sop means suds, dishwater, soapy water; the Dutch word for soup is soep. So ordering sop in a Cape Town restaurant gets you exactly what you want; using it in the Netherlands does not.
| Word | Afrikaans meaning | Dutch meaning |
|---|---|---|
| sop | soup | suds, dishwater |
Daar is warm sop op die stoof as jy honger is.
There's hot soup on the stove if you're hungry.
netnou — bidirectional 'in a moment / just now', with no single Dutch equivalent
This is the most subtle trap, and one no Dutch word matches cleanly. Afrikaans netnou points in both directions in time: depending on context it means in a little while / shortly (near future) or a moment ago / just now (recent past). Dutch keeps these two meanings in separate words — zo meteen / straks for the near future, zojuist / zonet for the recent past — so a Dutch speaker has no single word that behaves like netnou and tends to hear only one of its two senses.
Ek het hom netnou gesien means I saw him just now (past). Ek sien jou netnou means I'll see you in a bit (future). The tense and context disambiguate; the word itself stays neutral. There is also nou-nou, which similarly straddles "in a moment / a moment ago" and is even more colloquial.
| Word | Afrikaans meaning | Dutch equivalents |
|---|---|---|
| netnou | in a moment OR a moment ago | zo meteen/straks (future) vs. zonet/zojuist (past) |
Ek bel jou netnou terug — ek is net gou besig.
I'll call you back in a moment — I'm just busy for a second.
Hy was netnou nog hier; waar is hy nou?
He was here just a moment ago; where is he now?
baie — 'very / much / many', a word Dutch simply does not have
baie is one of the most common words in Afrikaans, covering very, much, many, and a lot. It looks exotic to Dutch eyes because it is not Dutch at all — it comes from Malay banyak (many), a relic of the Cape's Malay-speaking community. A Dutch speaker has nothing to transfer here, which is its own kind of trap: rather than mishearing it, they reach instead for Dutch heel, zeer, or veel, none of which is the natural Afrikaans choice. The everyday word is baie.
| Word | Afrikaans meaning | Dutch |
|---|---|---|
| baie | very, much, many, a lot | no cognate — uses heel / zeer / veel |
Baie dankie vir die hulp — dit het baie beteken.
Thank you very much for the help — it meant a lot.
Daar was baie mense by die mark.
There were many people at the market.
na — a partial false friend: 'to' as well as 'after'
A trickier, partial case. Dutch keeps two words apart: naar means to / towards (direction) and na means after (time). Afrikaans collapsed the spelling — na does both jobs. So Afrikaans na most often means to / towards (where a Dutch speaker expects naar), and only sometimes means after. A Dutch speaker reading Ons gaan na die see may instinctively read na as after and stumble, when it actually means we're going to the sea. Context — and usually the noun — tells you which sense is meant.
| Word | Afrikaans meaning | Dutch |
|---|---|---|
| na | to / towards; also after | naar = to; na = after (kept separate) |
Ons ry môre na die berge toe.
We're driving to the mountains tomorrow.
Kom kuier na ete — ons is dan klaar.
Come visit after dinner — we'll be done by then.
Common mistakes
❌ Ek het amper geslaag. (intending Dutch 'barely passed')
Misread — in Afrikaans this means 'I almost passed' (i.e. failed), the opposite of the Dutch sense.
✅ Ek het net-net geslaag.
I barely passed.
❌ Jy is so 'n aardige mens! (intending a compliment)
Misfires — in Afrikaans this calls someone strange/odd, not nice.
✅ Jy is so 'n gaaf mens!
You're such a nice person!
❌ Wil jy 'n bietjie soep hê? (Dutch spelling)
Wrong spelling in Afrikaans — soup is sop, not soep.
✅ Wil jy 'n bietjie sop hê?
Would you like a little soup?
❌ Ek het hom straks gesien. (reaching for the Dutch past-time word)
Unnatural — for 'I saw him just now' Afrikaans uses netnou, which covers both past and future.
✅ Ek het hom netnou gesien.
I saw him just now.
Key takeaways
- amper = almost in Afrikaans but barely in Dutch — a meaning that can completely flip.
- aardig = strange / odd (or queasy) in Afrikaans, not the Dutch nice / kind; use gaaf or vriendelik for "nice".
- sop = soup in Afrikaans (Dutch soep); Dutch sop is dishwater.
- netnou is bidirectional — in a moment or a moment ago — where Dutch splits the senses across separate words.
- baie has no Dutch cognate (from Malay banyak); it is the everyday word for very / much / many.
- na covers both to and after in Afrikaans, where Dutch keeps naar and na apart.
- For background on how the two languages relate, see the relationship to Dutch; for spelling traps, Dutch transfer spelling.
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Start learning Afrikaans→Related Topics
- English False FriendsB1 — Afrikaans words that look like English words but mean something else — aktueel, eventueel, slim, mak, rok, kind, warm — curated so you stop trusting the resemblance.
- Afrikaans and Dutch: A Grammatical ComparisonB2 — Afrikaans is the most analytic Germanic language — a daughter of 17th-century Dutch that kept Dutch syntax but shed almost all of its inflection.
- Dutch Transfer: Spelling and Final -nB1 — Afrikaans systematically respelled the Dutch it grew from — dropping the final -n, turning ij into y, -lijk into -lik and z into s — so Dutch spelling must be actively de-Dutchified rather than carried over.