Etxebunti wrote:Shiba wrote: Although we do that thing where "the department of informatics", for example, becomes "die departement informatika", dropping the "of" (or the "van"). My brother said he thinks that comes from French.
I think your brother is right we do that thing in French : Le département d'informatique => Le département informatique, service d'hygiène et sécurité=>service hygiène et sécurité...
Aha, I'm glad to hear that.
Etxebunti wrote:Some Afrikaans names have French roots also:
Le Clerq=>De Klerk
De villiers
...
and some surnames : Pierre, François...
That's true (the surnames and names are the other way around, though - Pierre and François are names and De Klerk, De Villiers etc. are surnames) - names like "André le Roux" and "Pierre du Toit" are very common, although we pronounce them a bit differently.
It was actually quite funny, a while ago I saw an interview on TV between a British interviewer and a famous South African ex-Rugby player, François Pienaar. The interviewer tried to pronounce the name in the French way, but he couldn't quite figure out how to pronouce "Pienaar" in a French way, so he kept on saying "FRANÇOIS ...
Pienah."
(I'm not sure what language "Pienaar" is from, though - it could actually be French, for all I know, although the "-aar" looks more Dutch.)
Etxebunti wrote:During the world cup there was a broadcast about a city called Franschoek (not sure about the spelling) where lots of French immigrants settled. iirc some farms there still bear French names.
That's exactly how you spell Franschoek.
There probably are still a lot of farms bearing French names - there are many still bearing their original names in other languages as well.
Etxebunti wrote:Regarding grammar I think its different but for me the advantage of Afrikaans is that the use of verbs seems to be waaaaaaaaaay simpler :
Je suis / ek is
Tu es / Jy is
Il,elle est / hy, sy, dit is
nous sommes / ons is
Vous êtes / julle is
ils,elles sont / hulle is
Its a bit off topic, sorry about that
The grammar is different in general; I'm pretty sure Afrikaans grammar is closer to Dutch grammar than anything else (but also a lot simpler).
And no problem about the topic, I don't stay on topic all the time either.
I suppose it would be better if a moderator could split the topic, but it's not as if this forum is incredibly active anyway.