As mentioned Dutch forms the basis for most of the vocabulary of Afrikaans. However many of the words come from different parts of the world. E.g. the word "baie" (meaning "many") comes from Malay origin other words come from other indigenous South African languages such as Xhosa and Sotho. Many of the more intricate verb forms of Dutch have been discarded making it a fairly easy language from a gramatical perspective.
An interesting fact about the written form of Afrikaans is that it first appreared in arabic script and not in the roman alphabet which currently predominates the written form. One of the earliest translations of the Koran was also into this written form of Afrikaans.
To explain the reaons for the above fact I need to point out that Afrikaans originated from two different cultural groups. The first and most obvious one is the Dutch immigrants that followed Jan van Riebeeck and later leaders to the Cape. The second group were the Malay slaves that were imported to do a lot of the work in the colony. This latter group was strongly Islamic and spoke a bastardised version of Dutch which later became Afrikaans.
Here's a few things to watch out when you move from Afrikaans to Dutch or vice versa:
- neuk - in Afrikaans this means to hit somebody, in Dutch this is to fuck someone (I am not trying to be rude, just precise).
- kombuis - in Afrikaans this is a the word for kitchen, however in Dutch this is the word for galley. This is an interesting example to demonstrate that a lot of Afrikaans came from sea-fairing Dutchmen.
- verskoon - in Afrikaans you use this word to ask somebody to excuse you, in Dutch this would mean you want to be cleaned.