New iOS and iPadOS adds keyboards for South African languages

Hanno Labuschagne

Hanno Labuschagne

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New iOS and iPadOS adds keyboards for South African languages

Apple revealed the next versions of its device operating systems, including iOS 27 and iPadOS 27, would get software keyboards for South Africa’s three most spoken languages: Afrikaans, Xhosa, and Zulu.

According to South Africa’s last reliable census data from 2011, Zulu was the primary language in 22.7% of households, Xhosa in 16%, and Afrikaans in 13.5%.
 
This was one of the main reasons why I refused to buy an Apple product. Google, Gemini, Copilot, my Samsung Phone, my car, my computer and even my TV speaks Afrikaans to me but all Apple products refuse to do so. The keyboard alone will not make me buy an iPhone, they need to support other languages in the operating system itself.
 
Nice only thing I was still missing coming from Android.
Stonemason said:
This was one of the main reasons why I refused to buy an Apple product. Google, Gemini, Copilot, my Samsung Phone, my car, my computer and even my TV speaks Afrikaans to me but all Apple products refuse to do so. The keyboard alone will not make me buy an iPhone, they need to support other languages in the operating system itself.
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No thanks I refuse to help anyone with Afrikaans set systemwide. Most of the words are bollocks anyway.
 
how does an afrikaans and an english keyboard differ?
 
mpdjhb said:
how does an afrikaans and an english keyboard differ?
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The accents on certain letters. Obviously it's possible to put the accents with "insert symbol" in Word, but it's generally not available on a keyboard. The accents are probably more easily obtained with an Afrikaans keyboard (fewer steps).
 
Stonemason said:
This was one of the main reasons why I refused to buy an Apple product. Google, Gemini, Copilot, my Samsung Phone, my car, my computer and even my TV speaks Afrikaans to me but all Apple products refuse to do so. The keyboard alone will not make me buy an iPhone, they need to support other languages in the operating system itself.
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Agg nee fok man !!

;)
 
Smiggles said:
Nice only thing I was still missing coming from Android.

No thanks I refuse to help anyone with Afrikaans set systemwide. Most of the words are bollocks anyway.
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Give an example of a word that is bollocks and then explain why you regard that word as such?
 
Stonemason said:
Hoekom? Ek praat goeie Afrikaans by die huis en verwag van slim goed in my huis om ook Afrikaans te praat.
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I get you pal :)

Im also Afrikaans, wife uses the Android / google box stuff and I just stick to my iOS.
 
This is pretty great. I talk Afrikaans at home and English everywhere else, and this has been a major reason why I had to use a different keyboard.

And yes - it is not about the actual layout. Even though AFrikaans use some ê and ï's - that has always been pretty easy to do on an Apple device. The biggest reason is simply the dictionary and auto-correct. When the default Apple iPhone keyboard auto-corrects my Afrikaans into English, it sucks. And using it to write English without auto-correct also sucks.
 
ebendl said:
This is pretty great. I talk Afrikaans at home and English everywhere else, and this has been a major reason why I had to use a different keyboard.
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Yup, we can see that.

But on topic yeah it was annoying when it started doing Dutch corrections over the last few versions for Afrikaans.

Fortunately if you’ve used it long enough it remembers your most common words and stops correcting them.
 
Nice, hopefully this will stop the auto correcting to Dutch from Afrikaans words. We probably broke the Dutch dictiory by keeping correcting the Dutch words.
 
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