Afrikaans

The language of Afrikaans can trace its roots in the Dutch Cape Colony, a group of settlers from the Dutch United East India Company who occupied the region now known as South Africa. Although there is some disagreement about the exact origins of the language, it is considered to have developed in some fashion from Dutch. Many historians believe that the Dutch settlers gradually diverted from the European language, perhaps both naturally and through interaction with native languages.

Later events in the region further influenced its linguistic development.The English capture of the region, along with the colonial history of Apartheid, led the language to adopt traits and words from other languages, both native and foreign to the region. This eventually resulted in the Afrikaans spoken as today as the official language of South Africa, alongside several other languages like Zulu and Xhosa.

Languages always develop and evolve from their own contexts and communities, taking form to describe experiences and concepts specific to the speakers. While many communities may have common experiences, the unique aspects of each community are often reflected in their language. This means that two languages that develop in different contexts may describe the same phenomena in fundamentally different ways, if they even describe the same thing at all.

This complexity makes translation tricky and often downright difficult. Direct translations often sound silly or even incoherent because they do not take into account the cultural differences and, as a result, the linguistic differences between the two languages. Therefore, cultural understanding becomes a crucial part of the translation process, as it is necessary not only to choose the right words but also accurately describe the same concept from a different linguistic and cultural perspective.