LESSON NOTES
Pronunciation S1 #5
Pronouncing The Afrikaans
Alphabet
CONTENTS
2 Grammar
# 5
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GRAMMAR
T he Focus of T his Lesson Is Spelling Words out Loud-Alphabet Sounds
As we learned before, the Afrikaans alphabet has 26 letters, 20 consonants, and 6
vowels.
Afrikaans letters might sound different depending on if you're using them to spell
out a word or using them in a word.
It's very useful to know how to pronounce letters when spelling a word. For
example, when at the reception of a hotel, they'll surely ask you to spell out your
name.
So here we are the letters of the Afrikaans alphabet with their proper pronunciation.
Let t er / Pronunciat ion / Part in t he word t hat sounds t he same as t he
let t er. / "English"
A / Ah / aap / "monkey"
B / Bay / beest / "animal"
C / Say / CD / "CD"
D / Day / deeg / "dough"
E / Ay / eet / "eat"
F / Ef / besef / "realize"
G / ( Afrikaans g) ay / gee / "give"
H / Hah / haas / "hare"
I / E / iets / "something"
J / Jay / Jesus / "Jesus"
K / Kaah / kano / "canoe"
L / El / elke / "each"
M / Em / emmer / bucket
N / En / mense / "people"
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O / Oh / oop / "open"
P / Pay / peer / "pear"
Q / kuuh / IQ / "IQ"
R / err / erflik / "heritable"
S / ess / les / "lesson"
T / tay / teen / "against"
U / uuh / uur / "hour"
V / vay / veter / "Shoe-lace"
W / way / wege / "roads"
X / iks / mix / "mix"
Y / Eh-ee / ---- / -----
Z / zet / zef / "cool" (slang)
As you can see in the list above, except for the letters A, E, O and U, the letter by
itself almost is almost never pronounced as it is pronounced within a word.
To give it the alphabet sound these letters need:
B,C, D, G, J, P T, V, W / "ear" sound after the letter
F, L,M,N,R,S, / "e" short sound in front of the letter
H, and K / "aa" long sound after the letter
A, E, O, and U / can have the sound by itself or as double letters
I / the letter "e"
Q / In English "kyu" in Afrikaans Kuu
Y / This sound the same as the diphthong EI
X / the letter "i" in front
Z / the letters "et"
Here are so examples of how to spell one's name:
Mies:
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M.I.E.S.
"em" "ie" "ear" " es."
And Jacob would be:
J.A.C.O.B
Jay, ah, seer, ewer, beer.
Conf using Let t ers
As in English, some alphabet letters can be easily mixed up. For example, the
letters M and N sometimes sound quite similar. In this case we would use names of
words that everyone knows in order to give the correct spelling.
So we say:
M van Moskow, "M from Moscow"
Or
N van Natal, "N from Natal"
Good luck!
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