Sorry to hijack the topic and speak English, but I'm doing a linguistics degree and find language politics fascinating..
What is it that makes a language then?
Because, though you say it is quite different, I can go on youtube and see Charlize Theron (an Afrikaans speaker) being interviewed on Flemish (Dutch-speaking Belgians) TV, and speaking Afrikaans to the interviewer. This would imply that the two languages are mutually intelligible, which for example, English and Xhosa are not.
Whether the speakers consider themselves Dutch or not is irrelevant. 50 Cent is a native English speaker, despite the fact that he is American and has little to no English ancestry.
What I'm getting at here isn't a criticism of Afrikaans or even suggesting that it can't be called a language. It's just that there is no official definition of what a language is, and Afrikaans is one of the many dialects/ languages that exist in the periphary between a dialect and a language. In Scotland, where I am now, there apparently exists a language called Scots spoken my a few million people (auld lang syne etc.) which to me seems nothing more than a English spoken with Scottish accent, colloquialisms, and a few small changes in Grammar. If you listen to a dancehall track you'll hear something called Jamaican Patois, which is considered a mere dialect, although to me it is far more distinct than Scots.
Basically, this distinction can be summed up by one linguist's quote: 'Language is a dialect with an army and navy' - in other words peoples' speech tends to be grouped into 'languages' when the people themselves are organised into something like a nation.
