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Cake day: November 24th, 2023

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  • Even with related languages. Afrikaans is descended from Dutch and practically next door to English linguistically. But it insists on the formal/informal pronouns which English abandoned centuries ago (to the extent that most speakers don’t know that Thou is the familiar form). And children will speak to their parents in the 3rd person, “Will Daddy come with us to the shops?”.

    Furthermore it has completely lost the old past tense of verbs; you have to use the perfect past tense. Novels are written in the “historical present”.

    Translation is never trivial.