TIMED PRACTICE · Afrikaans
Afrikaans typing speed test
Flow like a stream. Space commits a word, backspace fixes the last one. Tab or Esc restarts.
Testing your Afrikaans typing speed
Afrikaans uses the Latin alphabet you already have. The practice words here add 3 characters beyond a-z — ê, ô, ë.
The awkward part of Afrikaans is not the alphabet, it is the 3 characters these practice words put outside it: ê, ô and ë. Whether your layout gives them a dedicated key or builds them from a modifier, the reach has to become a trained motion rather than a decision — they turn up in 6% of the practice words.
Most people arrive at Afrikaans able to type and unable to type Afrikaans, which is a narrower problem than it feels. The letter keys are already done. What is left is a small number of positions, and the willingness to reach for them rather than paste them in.
Not all keys are worth the same. Ten characters carry around 73% of everything you will type in these Afrikaans drills, and the remaining 15 share what is left. That is why the course introduces its material a little at a time rather than all at once: the early characters do a disproportionate amount of the work.
The speed test and the games draw on one bank of 102 common Afrikaans words — 25 distinct characters in all, averaging 4.1 written units per word. A test can run for a fixed duration or a fixed number of words, with punctuation and numbers optional. Words are drawn at random each time, so no two runs are the same and there is nothing to memorise. The result reports net speed, accuracy, how steady you were across the run, and the five keys you got wrong most often.
- Writing system
- Latin
- Keyboard layout
- Latin QWERTY family
- Direction
- left to right
- Practice words
- 102
- Distinct characters
- 25
- Average word
- 4.1 units
Characters beyond a-z in the Afrikaans practice words
- ê3
- ô2
- ë1
Counted across the 102 practice words. 6% of them need at least one.
kalm hande vind die tuisry sonder om te kykDutch spelling, simplified and then some
Afrikaans descends from seventeenth-century Dutch and has a considerably simpler spelling system, having dropped most of Dutch's inflection and regularised much of its orthography. A Dutch reader can read Afrikaans; the reverse is also largely true.
It uses the circumflex on ê, î, ô and û, the diaeresis on ë and ï, and the acute for emphasis. The most distinctive orthographic feature is the apostrophe in the indefinite article 'n, which is written lowercase even at the start of a sentence — so a sentence can begin 'n Man, with the capital falling on the second word.
A standard US or UK keyboard with a dead key covers Afrikaans without difficulty, which is what most Afrikaans typists use.
Questions about typing in Afrikaans
Do I need an Afrikaans keyboard?
No. Your operating system already offers a layout that produces ê, ô and ë from the keys you have — through a dead key on some, a modifier such as right Alt on others. Which one depends on the language and on the layout you select; the hardware does not change either way.
How is typing speed measured here?
In words per minute, where a "word" is a fixed five characters rather than an actual word. That convention is what makes a WPM figure comparable between languages whose real words are very different lengths. The number reported is net WPM: uncorrected mistakes are subtracted, so it reflects text you actually produced correctly.
Why is my Afrikaans speed lower than my English speed?
Because you are doing two things at once: finding the key and recalling what it writes. Speed in a script you have typed for years is one motion; speed in a new one is a lookup followed by a motion. The lookup is what disappears with practice, and when it does the gap closes faster than most people expect.
Is the Afrikaans typing test the same every time?
No. Words are drawn at random from the Afrikaans bank on every run, so there is nothing to memorise and a second attempt is a fresh test rather than a rehearsal. You can fix the duration or the word count, turn punctuation and numbers on, or paste your own text.
Which Afrikaans keyboard layout do these tests use?
Latin QWERTY family, plus the 3 characters beyond a-z that these practice words use. The 102 practice words between them use 25 of those 29, so 4 characters never come up in the practice text — these are the commonest words rather than an even sweep of the layout. The keyboard guide below the typing area shows the keys you actually press, which for an input method are the Latin ones already printed on them.
What will I actually be typing in Afrikaans?
102 of the most common words in Afrikaans, drawn at random. They use 25 distinct characters between them and average 4.1 written units each, with the longest running to about 10. Short, frequent words are used on purpose: they are the ones your hands will meet most often outside a lesson, so the practice transfers.
Is Afrikaans hard to type?
Only slightly, if you already touch type. 6% of the practice words need a character outside a-z, 3 such characters appear in total, and the rest is a keyboard you already know. The difficulty is concentrated in a handful of positions rather than spread across the layout.
Do I need an account, and is it free?
Neither. There is no paid tier and no required sign-in — the 102 Afrikaans practice words, the speed test and all three games are the whole product, available immediately. Signing in is worth it only if you practise on more than one device.
Also in Afrikaans: lessons and typing games.
Other languages written in Latin: Albanian, Azerbaijani, Basque, Catalan, Cebuano, Croatian. Or browse all 86 by writing system.
Further reading
- The home rowASDF and JKL; are where every touch typist's hands return. What the home row is, why the bumps are there, and how to drill it properly.
- How hard is each script to type? Every keyboard here, measuredThirty-five keyboards, four things counted about each: how many keys they define, how much of the language they reach, and how large its character set is.
- Do typing games help, and what do they measure?Games are a good diagnostic and a poor teacher. What pressure exposes that a calm test does not, and the limit of playing your way to a faster speed.