Charlize Theron notified the world that there were only 44 Afrikaans speakers left in the world⊠this was their response.
Global (20 November 2022) – Charlize Theron is facing a mountain of backlash on social media after calling Afrikaans “a dying language”.
The Hollywood star said it was only spoken by “44 people” while on the SmartLess podcast with Jason Bateman, Sean Hayes and Will Arnett. Some have said it was a joke taken out of context, while others are furious that the actress would speak about one of South Africa’s official languages in that way.
About 13.5% of the South African population (7 million people) speak Afrikaans as a first language, making it the third most common natively-spoken language in the country, after Zulu and Xhosa. It has the widest geographic and racial distribution of the 11 official languages and is widely spoken and understood as a second or third language, although Zulu and English are estimated to be understood as a second language by a much larger proportion of the population.
Many memes and jokes have popped up since the podcast went live, but a video published by “Dark Matter Creative” has started trending on social media sites and WhatsApp groups.
Watch the video below:
@darkmatter.creative Charlize Theron notified the world that there were only 44 Afrikaans speakers left in the world⊠this was their reponse. #fyp #charlizetheron #afrikaans ⏠original sound – darkmatter.creative