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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