can somebody give me an idea of what an affrikaans accent sounds like?
Vaguely Dutch with some British and local African (Bantu-family languages) influences.
I may be recalling incorrectly, but didn’t Charlize Theron (who is a native South African) speak with a Afrikaaner accent in her debut film 2 Days in the Valley?
It is rather flat - with all the vowels being pronounced at the back of the throat. Also, the r’s are extended and rolled slightly.
DO NOT watch Lethal Weapon 2 or Muriel’s Wedding for decent Afrikaans accents - Cry Freedom is much better… I have not seen 2 Days in the Valley…
Grim
If so it was inadvertent. I think she was supposed to be nordic ( Swedish or Norwegian, I can’t remember which ).
- Tamerlane
My foster sister was watching “Fear Factor” and kept saying one of the guys was cute - they were driving a car up a ramp and into a pile of blocks; I don’t know anything about the show, so if the people change episode by episode, well, that’s the episode it was. Anyway, the guy she thought was cute was from South Africa. His accent struck me as being kinda Dutch and kinda British.
The accent most used in American films is a more ‘northern’ Afrikaans accent (from cities like Pretoria, which is hevily Afrikaans). In Lethal Weapon 2 the main villain sounded like he’d just left the place.
I should note there is no standard Afrikaans accent, there are a number of different Afrikaans ‘dialects’ depending on where you are in the country which all produce differing accents. Even here in the Western Cape, a pretty small area, there are at least 3 distinct Afrikaans accent “groups”. In the Northern Suburbs of Cape Town there is your standard Afrikaans accent found amongst the white Afrikaner community. This accent isn’t as ‘severe’ as say the accent of Afrikaans speakers further up north (like Pretoria) due to English being just as used in Cape Town as English.
Further north than that you have the Wes Kus (West Coast) dialect spoken amongst the fishermen and wheat farmers which is distinct in the way it heavily rolls r’s. And then closer to home on the Cape Flats there is Gam Taal, which is found spoken almost exclusively amongst the urban coloured community, which uses a lot of mispronounciation of letters (a 'j; is pronounced like ‘zh’) and slang.
It’s my least favourite accent actually. I am rarely exposed to Afrikaans, but when I AM, I find it extremely disturbing. I have no connection to anything South African, so it should bother me in the slightest. But I must admit that it does…
I have heard it said that South Africans in general, and those with Afrikaans accents in particular, come across as very dogmatic and blunt to the listener. This is probably due to the tendancy to end word on a “down” note - the complete opposite of the Australian accent which has a tendancy to end on an “up” note (the so called AQI - Australian Questioning Intonation). Everything that is said in an Afrikaans accent comes out sounding like a statement of fact, rather than a question/opinion/anything else. I guess that this must be rather intimidating to anyone not used to it…
Here is a BBC Programme looking at the development of various strains of International English (in this case English in South Africa) - if you listen to the third part of the programme, the person being interviewed does (at the end of the slot) an impression of “Eastern Cape English”, which has a lot of the characteristics of an Afrikaans accent…
Grim
And I should add that there is quite a bit of cross pollenation amongst languages. Even though I am not Afrikaans speaking, I still use the ‘ja’ (pronounced ‘ya’, Afrikaans for ‘yes’) in everyday language.
How about the golfer Retief Goosen? I’m assuming his name is of Dutch origin, does he speak with an Afrikaans accent? And how would you pronounce his last name?
Is the “English” S.A. accent a whole different animal? To an American it sounds vaguely Australian, but noticeably different.
Goosen = the “G” is pronounced “ch” as in loch; the “oo” is pronounced shorter and more gutteral than in English (think a monkey going “Oo, oo, oo”) and the “sen” is much the same as English.
I don’t think Retief has much of an accent, and that Ernie Els’ is more pronounced - but I really can’t remember… This page has some interviews with him - judge for yourself…
Grim
::imagining Dopers making monkey noises 
::
I can´t add too much to what´s already been said, but I would like to say that having just come back from a few months in Cape Town I think the Afrikaans accent rocks.
However, (slight hijack) I don´t understand the need to say “is it” all the time as an alternative to “oh really.” It´s confusing for us non-locals!
I haven’t heard Retief Goosen Speak, but Ernie has a definite accent if you hear him talk.
Hijack: “Is it” is more like one word now, “izzit”. Just like the standard greeting in South Africa, “Howzit”, is a smoosh of “How is it going?”.
I managed to confuse a few Europeans when I was over there with my use of the SA phrase “just now”, which means in a short while, when being asked to do something. They’d always reply “so you’re going to do it now?” and I’d have to say “Not now, just now”.
Both Ernie and Retief have pretty heavy accents, to an American ear. They both sound the same to me, and I’m usually pretty good at picking up on accents (or at least better than the average American).
Any input on my question about the “English” S.A. accent?
The guy on Fear Factor was Zimbabwean and he had a very typical strong English South African accent. I have lost most of my accent, very few people can tell i’m from SA but I can spot a fellow South African from a mile away. I don’t particularly like the accent especially after living outside the country for 5 years but especially the very guttural Afrikaans accent grates on my ears.