A2A by Michael Koeberg. Ah, Michael Koeberg. I’m the guy that dismissed the same question on Romanian as “too many diphthongs”, referred to the distinctive qualities of the French language as “Froggy shit”, and refuses to listen to Brazilian anything. Are you sure you want to ask me?
OK. My background in Afrikaans:
… not much. I’ve heard Dutch; I’ve been to Amsterdam. I worked in the same department as a world expert on Afrikaans (“Bruce Donaldson”). I didn’t talk to him as much as I should have.
Well, I played the video.
Two seconds in: well, dude doesn’t look like Pik Botha.
Four seconds in: dude sounds like Pik Botha.
Six seconds in: if I spoke Dutch in a vaudeville Seouth Effricen accent, it wouldn’t sound too different to this. It’s the intonation: lots of staying at a high pitch.
Thirty seconds in: “…. waat is die woord nau…” Cute!
It does sound Dutch to someone that doesn’t know any Dutch; the trilled r’s stand out compared to Dutch, and it may (or may not) be slightly more guttural than Dutch. But Dutch is pretty guttural already.
If you know Dutch, I’m sure it sounds lightyears away, and you can tell that it’s been creolised. But if you’re me, and the only Dutch you know is Het Wilhelmus, I don’t think it sounds that different
Except for the trilled r’s. They’re very noticeable.
And the intonation.