20 Things You Didn't Know About Charlize Theron
19. English Is Not Her First Language
Though she is fluent in English, like 13.5 per cent of those born and raised in South Africa, her native tongue is Afrikaans. There are 11 official languages in the country, but Afrikaans - a sort of South African Dutch - is the widest geographically and racially distributed among them, and most living there have knowledge of it as a second or third language.
She still addresses her mother, who now lives minutes from her in Los Angeles, in their first tongue.