If you already speak Dutch, Afrikaans pronunciation feels almost transparent on the page and then trips you the moment you read aloud — because the differences are systematic, not random. Afrikaans descends from seventeenth-century Dutch and then simplified its vowels, lost a class of consonant endings, and hardened its g everywhere. This page covers only the sound system; for what diverged in grammar and vocabulary see the relationship to Dutch. The orthographic headline: Afrikaans usually writes what Northern Dutch only sometimes drops in speech — most importantly, it writes -e where Dutch writes -en.
The g: both have it, Afrikaans more so
The famous "harsh" g is the one thing that does not divide the two languages — both have the voiceless velar/uvular fricative. In Standard Northern Dutch the written g is typically a "hard g" [χ] (uvular), while Southern Dutch and Flemish use a softer [ɣ] or . Afrikaans is uniformly hard: the g is ~ [χ] in every position, with no soft southern variant and no voiced [ɣ].
| Word | Afrikaans | Dutch | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| goed (good) | [xut] | [ɣut] / [χut] | Afr. always voiceless and hard |
| dag (day) | [dax] | [dɑχ] | final g hard in both |
Goeie genade, dis 'n groot gat in die grond!
Good grief, that's a big hole in the ground! (five hard g's in a row)
Where Afrikaans diverges sharply is that intervocalic g is often deleted entirely, a step beyond anything in Standard Dutch: Dutch regen [ˈreːɣə(n)] corresponds to Afrikaans reën [ˈreːə(n)] — the g gone, the gap marked in spelling with a diaeresis (reën, "rain"). Dutch vogel → Afrikaans voël ("bird"); Dutch mogen → Afrikaans mag. So the g is at once harder (no soft variant) and, between vowels, frequently absent. See the g-sound for the full picture.
The lost final -n: more than a sound change
In Dutch, the -en ending (infinitives, plurals, many verb forms) is spelled with -n but the -n is silent in most Northern speech: lopen is said [ˈloːpə], not [ˈloːpən]. Afrikaans took the colloquial pronunciation and made it the standard, in writing too: Dutch lopen → Afrikaans loop, Dutch maken → maak, Dutch spreken → praat/spreek. The schwa often went as well, leaving a bare stem; where a schwa remains, it is written -e, never -en.
| Meaning | Dutch (written) | Dutch (spoken) | Afrikaans (written = spoken) |
|---|---|---|---|
| to walk / run | lopen | [ˈloːpə] | loop [loːp] |
| to make | maken | [ˈmaːkə] | maak [maːk] |
| houses (plural) | huizen | [ˈhœyzə] | huise [ˈhœysə] |
| gardens (plural) | tuinen | [ˈtœynə] | tuine [ˈtœynə] |
This is the difference that belongs in a grammar guide, not just a pronunciation note, because the dropped -n is morphological, not merely phonetic. By losing it, Afrikaans flattened whole systems:
- The infinitive lost its -en and now equals the bare stem, identical to the present tense (loop is both "to walk" and "(I) walk"). Dutch keeps lopen (infinitive) distinct from loop (1sg). See the infinitive.
- The plural ending -en became -e: Dutch huizen → Afrikaans huise, boeken → boeke. The -e plural is now one of the two main Afrikaans plural types. See plurals.
- Verb agreement collapsed: with no -en (or -t, also lost) to mark person, Afrikaans verbs are invariant — ek loop, jy loop, hulle loop.
Ons loop elke oggend in die park; die honde hardloop voor.
We walk every morning in the park; the dogs run ahead.
Daar is twee ou huise en drie nuwe huise in die straat.
There are two old houses and three new houses in the street.
So when a Dutch speaker mentally restores the -n ("surely it's lopen"), they're not just over-pronouncing — they're reaching for a morphological category Afrikaans no longer has.
Simplified vowels
Afrikaans pared back the Dutch vowel inventory. Two reductions matter most.
The front rounded vowels eroded. Dutch uu [y] and eu [øː] survive in Afrikaans but in a narrower set of words, and Dutch ui [œy] corresponds to Afrikaans ui, realised more centrally — closer to [œy] ~ [ɐy] depending on region. Dutch uu in vuur [vyːr] matches Afrikaans vuur [fyːr] (note also v → [f], below), but many Dutch [y] words appear in Afrikaans with an unrounded or shifted vowel.
Unstressed syllables reduce to schwa more thoroughly. Final and pretonic vowels in Afrikaans collapse to [ə] readily — the -e plural and infinitive remnants are all [ə]. See schwa and reduction.
Die vuur brand fel; die rook trek deur die kombuis.
The fire burns fiercely; the smoke drifts through the kitchen.
Diphthongised long vowels
Where Dutch keeps certain long monophthongs, Afrikaans diphthongised them — a key reason the two sound different even on shared words.
| Word | Dutch | Afrikaans | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| been (leg) | [beːn] | [bɪən] | ee monophthong → centring diphthong [ɪə] |
| boom (tree) | [boːm] | [bʊəm] | oo → [ʊə] |
| tien (ten) | [tin] | [tin] | ie stays a monophthong (no change) |
Afrikaans ee and oo are not the pure long vowels of Dutch but centring diphthongs [ɪə] and [ʊə] — the vowel glides toward schwa. A Dutch speaker reading been or boom with a flat Dutch [eː]/[oː] is immediately marked as foreign. See diphthongs.
Ek het my been teen die groot boom langs die pad gestamp.
I knocked my leg against the big tree next to the road.
The r: trilled, and pronounced everywhere
Standard Afrikaans r is a trilled or tapped alveolar [r] ~ [ɾ], and crucially it is pronounced in all positions, including after vowels — daar, werk, vuur all keep an audible r. Dutch r is famously variable (alveolar trill, uvular [ʁ], or a vocalised/dropped r in coda position, especially in the west: daar often [daːɐ̯]). For a Dutch speaker from the Randstad, the habit to break is dropping or weakening coda r: Afrikaans wants a clear rolled r in werk [vɛrk], in endings, and word-finally. See the r-sound.
Werk hard, ry versigtig, en kom veilig daar aan.
Work hard, drive carefully, and arrive there safely.
The v, w and f shuffle
A smaller but persistent difference: Afrikaans v is voiceless [f] (it merged with f), and Afrikaans w is a labiodental [v] ~ [ʋ]. So Dutch vuur [vyːr] (voiced v) is Afrikaans vuur [fyːr] (voiceless), and Afrikaans water is [ˈvɑːtər] — the w doing the job Dutch v might. A Dutch speaker who voices the Afrikaans v sounds slightly off.
Die vis swem in die vars water van die rivier.
The fish swims in the fresh water of the river.
Side-by-side cognates
Five cognates summarising the systematic shifts:
| Meaning | Afrikaans (spelling) | Afrikaans (IPA) | Dutch (spelling) | Dutch (IPA) | What differs |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| to walk | loop | [loːp] | lopen | [ˈloːpə(n)] | lost -en → bare stem (morphological) |
| bridge | brug | [brœx] | brug | [brʏχ] | same spelling; g hard in both; vowel slightly more open in Afr. |
| house | huis | [hœys] | huis | [ɦœys] | same diphthong; Dutch h often voiced [ɦ], Afr. plain [h] |
| rain | reën | [ˈreːə(n)] | regen | [ˈreːɣə(n)] | intervocalic g deleted in Afr. (diaeresis marks the gap) |
| good | goed | [xut] | goed | [ɣut] / [χut] | Afr. g uniformly hard/voiceless |
Common mistakes
❌ Ek wil graag *lopen* — pronouncing the n.
A Dutch speaker restoring the silent -n; Afrikaans has only loop, no -n at all.
✅ Ek wil graag loop.
I'd like to walk.
❌ Saying boom as a flat Dutch [boːm].
Afrikaans oo is a centring diphthong [bʊəm], not a pure long vowel.
✅ boom [bʊəm]
tree — let the vowel glide toward schwa.
❌ Dropping the r in werk → [vɛːk].
A Randstad habit; Afrikaans keeps a clear rolled coda r.
✅ werk [vɛrk]
work — roll the r.
❌ Voicing v in vis → [vɪs].
Afrikaans v is voiceless [f].
✅ vis [fɪs]
fish.
❌ Writing the plural as huizen / huisen.
Afrikaans wrote the dropped -n out of the plural: it's -e, not -en/-zen.
✅ huise
houses.
Key takeaways
- The hard g unites the two languages; Afrikaans differs by having no soft variant and by deleting intervocalic g (reën, voël), marked with a diaeresis.
- The final -n is gone in Afrikaans speech and spelling: Dutch -en → Afrikaans bare stem or -e. This is morphological, having reshaped the infinitive (= bare stem) and the plural (-e) — which is why it sits in a grammar guide.
- Afrikaans simplified the front-rounded vowels and reduces unstressed syllables to schwa more thoroughly.
- Afrikaans diphthongised Dutch long ee/oo into centring [ɪə]/[ʊə]; flat Dutch monophthongs sound foreign.
- The r is trilled and audible in every position, and v is voiceless [f] while w is [v] — habits a Dutch speaker must consciously flip. See the relationship to Dutch for the non-phonetic differences.
Now practice Afrikaans
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Start learning Afrikaans→Related Topics
- 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.
- The Infinitive: loop, om te loopA1 — The Afrikaans infinitive is just the bare verb — used directly after modals, and wrapped in 'om te' for purpose and complement clauses.
- Forming Plurals: -e and -sA1 — How Afrikaans builds most plurals with the endings -e and -s, and how to choose between them.
- The Afrikaans G: A Guttural FricativeA1 — How to pronounce the Afrikaans g — a voiceless back-of-the-mouth fricative like the ch in Scottish 'loch' — and how it differs from the English hard g.
- Diphthongs: ei/y, ui, ou, ai, oiA2 — The Afrikaans gliding vowels — ei and y (one sound, two spellings), the famously hard ui, ou, ai, ooi and eeu — with IPA, plus the eu monophthong that travels with them.
- The Schwa and Unstressed VowelsA2 — How unstressed syllables in Afrikaans collapse to the colourless schwa [ə] — the prefixes ge-, be-, ver- and the final -e of plurals and inflected adjectives — and why hearing that reduction unlocks the past-tense and derivation systems.