Symbols
97Click a symbol to copy it and open its page.
Afrikaans alphabet
The 26 letters in Afrikaans order, capital and small, with the accented forms lined up by mark: the akuut (acute) for emphasis and dié, the gravis (grave) in nè and òf … òf, the kappie (circumflex) in wêreld and môre, and the deelteken (trema) in reën and geïnteresseerd. Accented letters sort with their plain letter.
’n and the apostrophe
’n (a, an) is normally typed as the apostrophe ’ followed by n. ʼn is the old one-character ’n, kept by Unicode but deprecated.
Quotation marks
Afrikaans quotes with the same curly marks as English: “…” and ‘…’ (the closing single mark is the apostrophe above).
Currency
The South African rand is written with a capital R (R50, R12,50), already in the alphabet above; the Namibian dollar is N$.
Where it's spoken
Countries where Afrikaans is mainly spoken, largest number of speakers first.
Afrikaans in emoji
Emoji Afrikaans speakers put in their messages: the fire and the meat of a braai, and the rugby ball of the Springbokke.
On the map
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The Afrikaans alphabet from A to Z
Afrikaans is written with the plain Latin alphabet, A a to Z z, in the same order as English. C, Q and X turn up mostly in names and borrowed words; native words use K and S instead, which is why Afrikaans writes kafee and sent where Dutch has café and cent. Dictionaries sort the accented letters together with the plain ones, so wêreld stands among the words that begin with we.
Afrikaans grew out of the Dutch spoken at the Cape from the 17th century, and its spelling was simplified along the way. Where Dutch writes the two-letter vowel ij, Afrikaans writes y: Dutch tijd, wijn and mijn are Afrikaans tyd (time), wyn (wine) and my. So the Dutch IJ ligature has no place here, and y is a busy vowel letter. The spelling rules are kept by the Taalkommissie of the Suid-Afrikaanse Akademie vir Wetenskap en Kuns in the Afrikaanse Woordelys en Spelreëls, the AWS.
The kappie (circumflex): ê ô û î â
The circumflex, called the kappie (little cap), is the mark most people think of as typically Afrikaans. It shows a vowel with its own long, open sound, often where a letter has dropped out of the older Dutch form. You see it in everyday words: wêreld (world), sê (say), lê (lie, lay), hê (have), êrens (somewhere), môre (tomorrow, morning) and brûe (bridges).
ê and ô are by far the most common; û, î and â are much rarer. Leaving the kappie off is a spelling mistake, and in some pairs it changes the word: se marks possession (Jan se fiets, Jan's bike) while sê means to say.
The deelteken (trema): ë ï ö ü
The two dots, the deelteken (dividing mark), look like a German umlaut but do a different job: they leave the vowel's sound alone and show that it begins a new syllable instead of merging with the vowel before it. Without them reen would be read with one long e; with them reën (rain) has two syllables. The same goes for seën (blessing), voël (bird), hoër (higher), knieë (knees), naïef, geïnteresseerd, koöperasie and reünie.
The deelteken is common in plurals and comparatives, where an ending meets a word that already ends in a vowel: knie becomes knieë, hoog becomes hoër.
Acute and grave accents, and the word ’n
The akuut (acute accent) marks emphasis. Its fixed use is dié (this, that) against die (the): dié boek means this particular book. In writing it can put emphasis on any vowel, the way English uses italics: Dít is wat ek bedoel, Ék het dit gedoen, néé. Borrowed names keep their accents too: René, André.
The gravis (grave accent) sits in a handful of words: nè (isn't it?), hè, appèl (appeal) as against appel (apple). The paired constructions use the acute: óf … óf (either … or) and én … én (both … and): Hy is óf siek óf lui.
The indefinite article ’n (a, an) is an apostrophe followed by n and is pronounced as a short, neutral 'uh'. It never takes a capital, so at the start of a sentence the next word does: ’n Man het gebel. Unicode has a single character for it, ʼn, encoded for use in Afrikaans but now deprecated. Use the curly apostrophe ’ rather than a straight '; Unicode recommends ’n as two characters. The apostrophe also forms plurals of words ending in a long vowel: ma’s, pa’s, foto’s, taxi’s.
How to type Afrikaans accents on a keyboard and phone
On Windows, turn on the US-International layout: press then e for ê, " then e for ë, ' then e for é, and then e for è; the same works with the other vowels, and the mark followed by Space gives the plain sign. Without it, hold Alt and type on the number pad: Alt0234 ê, Alt0244 ô, Alt0251 û, Alt0238 î, Alt0226 â, Alt0235 ë, Alt0239 ï, Alt0246 ö, Alt0252 ü, Alt0233 é, Alt0232 è, Alt0146 ’, Alt0147 “ and Alt0148 ”. In Word, type 0149 and press AltX for ʼn.
On a Mac, OptionI then the vowel gives the kappie (ê ô û), OptionU then the vowel the deelteken (ë ï ö ü), OptionE then the vowel the acute (é), and Option then the vowel the grave (è ò). OptionShift] types ’, and Option[ and OptionShift[ type “ and ”. On iPhone and Android, hold down e, o, u or i and slide to the accented letter; keyboards such as Gboard also offer an Afrikaans language with Afrikaans word suggestions. In HTML the entities are ê ô ë ï é è and ’, or paste the characters straight from this page.
Where Afrikaans is spoken
Afrikaans has an estimated 10 million speakers. By CLDR estimates about 7.9 million of them live in South Africa , where it is one of the official languages and is strongest in the Western and Northern Cape, and about 2.1 million in Namibia , where it is widely used as a common language between communities. A few thousand speakers live in Botswana, and many more in the South African communities abroad.
Money is written with R for the South African rand, placed before the amount with a decimal comma: R12,50. In Namibia prices are in Namibian dollars, written N. Afrikaans is closely related to Dutch, and a Dutch reader can follow much of it; see the Dutch collection for its letters, and the South Africa and Namibia collections for the flags, food and other emoji of each country.
How to use them
5 situationsClick to copyAfrikaans Alphabet & Special Characters combos
14Worth knowing
- ʼn, the one-character ’n, is in Unicode because of Afrikaans, yet it has been deprecated: the standard advice is to type an apostrophe and an n.
- Some of the earliest Afrikaans ever written down was in Arabic script, used in the 19th century by Muslim teachers at the Cape for religious books.
- The Afrikaans y does the work of the Dutch ij: tyd, wyn and ys are Dutch tijd, wijn and ijs.
- There is a monument to the language itself, the Afrikaanse Taalmonument on a hillside above Paarl in the Western Cape, opened in 1975.
Questions people ask
8What are the Afrikaans special characters?
ê ô û î â (the kappie), ë ï ö ü (the deelteken), é and the other acutes for emphasis and in dié, è in words like nè and hè, and ó in óf … óf, the apostrophe ’ in ’n and foto’s, and the quotation marks “ ” ‘ ’. ʼn is an old one-character form of ’n.
How many letters are in the Afrikaans alphabet?
26, the same as English, from A to Z. The accented letters are not separate letters; they sort together with their plain letter.
What is a kappie in Afrikaans?
The kappie is the circumflex accent , as in ê ô û î â. It marks a vowel with a long, open sound, in words like wêreld, sê, môre and brûe.
What is a deelteken in Afrikaans?
The deelteken is the two dots on ë ï ö ü. It shows that the vowel starts a new syllable, as in reën, voël, hoër and geïnteresseerd; it does not change the vowel's sound the way a German umlaut does.
How do you write 'n in Afrikaans?
Type an apostrophe followed by n: ’n. It means a or an and is never capitalised; at the start of a sentence the next word gets the capital, as in ’n Man het gebel. The single character ʼn exists but is deprecated.
How to type ê on a PC?
Hold Alt and type 0234 on the number pad, or switch to the US-International layout and press then e. On a Mac press OptionI, then e. On a phone, hold the e key and pick ê.
Is there an Afrikaans keyboard for iPhone?
You do not need one for the accents: on the standard iPhone keyboard, hold e and slide to ê ë é or è, and the same for o, u and i. For Afrikaans spelling suggestions, install a keyboard app that offers Afrikaans, such as Gboard, on iPhone or Android.
How do I copy and paste Afrikaans letters?
Click or tap any letter on this page to copy it, then paste with CtrlV, CmdV or long-press and Paste on a phone.
