Wikipedia Corrects Number of Afrikaans Speakers From 44 to 17 Million After Charlize Theron’s Claims

• Online encyclopedia company Wikipedia corrected the mistake of its site that there are 44 Afrikaans speakers
• The error was edited on Thursday after Hollywood actress Charlize Theron said the Afrikaans language would soon die out
• AfriForum said the language is very much alive, and the 17 million Afrikaans speakers can attest to the fact

Wikipedia corrected the figure of the number of Afrikaans speakers on their site from 44 to 17 million after someone changed it on Thursday.

Charlize Theron spoke about her Afrikaans heritage on a podcast show and said that Afrikaans is a dying language which is only spoken by 44 people in South Africa.

When her bold statement that the dialect is useless, a person changed the number of Afrikaans speakers to 44 on Wikipedia.

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The online encyclopedia company corrected the error after Afrikaans speakers in the country protested Theron's claims, reported EWN.

Alana Bailey from AfriForum defended the Afrikaans community, and the Academy Award winner's unsubstantiated statement was rubbished.

"If you want to know about the future of a language and the strength of a language, you should rather consult a linguist than an actress. Afrikaans is spoken by almost 7 million people, which shows that it's quite a significant language."

According to News24, the Pan South African Language Board (PanSALB) said in a statement on Friday that they are aware of the actress' disparaging comments. PanSALB reiterated that such comments push the narrative that Afrikaans is only spoken by white people in South Africa.

"Furthermore, Afrikaans maintains its official status in terms of the Constitution and is utilised in several cross-governmental communications and used as a medium of instruction in South African schools"

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Charlize Theron rocks Mzansi, ‘The Italian Job’ actress says Afrikaans is a dying language

Briefly News reported that Charlize Theron is topping the trends list after her remarks about her home language. The Hollywood superstar claimed only about 44 people still speak Afrikaans in Mzansi.

Slamming the language, The Devil's Advocate star reportedly said Afrikaans is "a dying language". News24 reports that Charlize Theron said she only learned to speak English fluently when she moved to the US a while back.

Source: Briefly News