The History of Afrikaans Spelling

Afrikaans spelling looks the way it does for a reason, and the reason is deliberate design. When Afrikaans was being shaped into a written standard in the early twentieth century, the people doing the work made a conscious choice: the spelling would be phonemic and simpler than Dutch — closer to how the language is actually pronounced, and freed from the historical baggage that makes Dutch (and English) spelling so unforgiving. So when an Afrikaans word looks like a stripped-down Dutch word — my for mijn, vriendelik for vriendelijk — that is not laziness or drift. It is reform. Understanding this turns Afrikaans spelling from a list of arbitrary facts into a system with a clear logic. The synchronic rules you actually apply today live in the Spelling group; this page is the history that explains why those rules exist.

Starting point: written Dutch at the Cape

For most of the nineteenth century, the language spoken at the Cape had diverged sharply from Dutch in grammar and vocabulary, but the written language remained Dutch — formal, conservative Dutch, full of letters that the spoken vernacular no longer pronounced. Writing mijn, vriendelijk, menschen, visch while saying something much simpler created exactly the kind of gap between speech and spelling that reformers elsewhere were also attacking. The campaign to write the spoken language as it was actually said — and the political movement to recognise it as a language in its own right — went hand in hand.

The first official spelling, 1914–1925

Afrikaans was given its first set of official spelling rules through the work of the Suid-Afrikaanse Akademie vir Taal, Lettere en Kuns (the South African Academy), whose spelling commission issued early rules from around 1914 onward. The decisive milestones came soon after: Afrikaans was recognised as a medium of instruction and, in 1925, was given official status alongside Dutch and English. The standardised spelling and the official status arrived together — the written norm and the political recognition reinforcing each other.

The guiding principle was stated plainly by the reformers: spell according to pronunciation and according to a small number of consistent rules, not according to Dutch etymology. Several specific changes followed directly from that principle.

The signature changes

ij becomes y

Dutch writes the long ei-like vowel two ways, ij and ei; Afrikaans collapsed the ij spelling to a single letter y. This is probably the most visible Dutch-to-Afrikaans signature.

-lijk becomes -lik

The Dutch adjective-and-adverb suffix -lijk, pronounced as a reduced -lik, was respelled exactly as pronounced: -lik.

sch becomes sk (or s)

Dutch sch was simplified to sk at the start of words and reduced to plain s at the end, matching the actual pronunciation.

The final -n drops

Dutch keeps a written final -n on many plurals and verb forms that the Cape vernacular no longer pronounced. Afrikaans dropped it in writing to match speech, which is why so many Afrikaans words end in a bare vowel where Dutch ends in -en.

The principle is consistent: the -n went only where it was no longer heard. Where the n is still pronounced (as in tien, seun), it stays. This is the phonemic rule doing its job.

Removing redundant double letters and silent consonants

Many Dutch words carried doubled vowels or silent consonants that Afrikaans pared back to the minimum needed to mark the sound.

The diacritics: circumflex and diaeresis

Reform did not only subtract — it also added two diacritic conventions that Dutch barely uses, precisely to keep the simplified spelling unambiguous.

The circumflex (ê, ô, î, û) marks a long, often open vowel, frequently where a consonant was lost and two vowels would otherwise be misread. Classic cases: wêreld (world), môre (morning/tomorrow), brûe (bridges, where the g of brug dropped between vowels), and the everyday sê (to say), nê? (right?).

The diaeresis (ë, ï, ö, ü) marks that a vowel begins a new syllable rather than forming a digraph with the vowel before it — exactly the Dutch trema convention, retained because the simplified spelling produced many vowel-vowel sequences that needed disambiguating.

The AWS: keeping the standard alive

A spelling reform is only as good as its maintenance, and Afrikaans has an unusually authoritative one. The Afrikaanse Woordelys en Spelreëls (Afrikaans Word List and Spelling Rules), universally abbreviated AWS, is the official codification of Afrikaans spelling, published and periodically revised by the Language Commission of the South African Academy. The first edition appeared in 1917, and successive editions (the current series runs into its eleventh edition) update the rules and the word list as the language evolves — settling questions of hyphenation, the writing of compounds, loanword spelling, and capitalisation.

For an advanced user, the AWS is the final court of appeal: when two spellings compete, the AWS decides. Its existence is also part of why Afrikaans spelling feels so regular — there is a single, living, official rule-book, revised by a standing commission, in a way English has never had.

Why this matters: the spelling is designed, not arbitrary

Pull the threads together and a pattern emerges. ij → y, -lijk → -lik, sch → sk, the dropped -n, the pared-back double letters: every one of these moves the spelling closer to pronunciation and toward fewer, simpler rules. The added diacritics exist to keep that simplified system unambiguous. None of it is random. Afrikaans spelling is one of the more successful phonemic reforms among European-derived written languages, and the learner who treats its regularities as deliberate design — rather than a list to memorise — will predict far more than they have to learn.

Common mistakes

The deepest error here is conceptual: assuming Afrikaans spelling is arbitrary or "just simplified Dutch you guess at." It is a designed system.

Key takeaways

• Afrikaans spelling was deliberately reformed out of Dutch in the early twentieth century on a phonemic principle: spell as it is pronounced, with fewer, simpler rules.
• Signature changes: ij → y (mijn → my), -lijk → -lik (vriendelijk → vriendelik), sch → sk/s (school → skool), and the dropped final -n where it was no longer heard (lopen → loop).
• Reform also added two diacritics: the circumflex (ê, marking vowel length/quality) and the diaeresis (ë, marking a syllable break) — different marks for different jobs.
• The first official rules came 1914–1925 (Afrikaans gained official status in 1925), and the standard is maintained today by the Afrikaanse Woordelys en Spelreëls (AWS), first published in 1917.
• The regularities are designed, not arbitrary — treat the spelling as a coherent reform and you can predict far more than you must memorise.