Hello, Africa!
Dutch native Marcel calls in from Holland to speak about how the Boerevolk are perceived in his country, the cultural ties that bind the Boerevolk to the Dutch, and the survival of "pan-Dutch" people and culture around the world.Marcel's website, which has many articles on Afrikaaners and Boerevolk, can be found here.
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I have compiled a number of interesting & informative excerpts concerning the Afrikaans language from the net.
Afrikaans is often erroneously thought to be just a dialect of Dutch. This is not the case at all as Afrikaans is in fact a distinct homegrown language with muti cultural roots.
The Afrikaans civil rights leader Dan Roodt notes that Afrikaans is the most developed indigenous language of South Africa. The industrialist Johann Wingard notes that Afrikaans is the most sophisticated African language on the African continent.
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Is Afrikaans not a creole of Dutch?
In the late nineteenth century, when most research on Afrikaans was based not on empirical, historical and etimological studies, but rather on the personal opinions of famous scholars, Afrikaans was regarded as a creole of Dutch. During the early twentieth century, however, several Dutch, German, English and South African scholars spend years studying early manuscripts, Netherland dialects, and modern linguistic theory, and were able to prove that Afrikaans is indeed not a creole, but a full language in its own right.
Some of the most favourable and valuable academic materials were published in Dutch and Afrikaans, but one or two books with less favourable opinions were written in English. Since English is far more widely understood than Dutch, many English speaking people read only the English books proclaiming Afrikaans to be a creole, thereby resulting in the worldwide mistaken belief that Afrikaans is indeed a creole.
Is Afrikaans not merely a simplified version of Dutch?
If you believe this, you might as well believe that French is a simplified version of Latin. While it is true that to the casual observer Afrikaans might look and sound like a watered down version of Dutch, Afrikaans actually boasts many linguistic features not found in Dutch at all. In fact, you might say that modern Dutch and modern Afrikaans are both dialects of late medieval Dutch. >>>
From: Brief intro to Afrikaans.
<<< Afrikaans, the modern version is more than merely a Dutch derivative as some would suggest.
Inextricably linked for the last century with the development and application of apartheid within South Africa, the immense reach and value of this language has often been overlooked within the wider political climate.
While the Dutch, who arrived in South Africa in 1652 and established a colony in Cape Town, are largely credited with the birth of the language, the version spoken today is an accumulation of many other influences. The Dutch dialect established after 1652 incorporated terms and phrases handed down from sailors who had been shipwrecked off the Cape coast after it became clear that the horn of Africa presented another viable trade route. These phrases, of both english and portuguese origin, soon found their way into the dutch dialect.
In addition, the language took on a more oriental flavour with the arrival of a slaves in the Cape, primarily of Malay extraction, but also from other eastern regions and nearby African islands including Madagascar.
This spiced the language considerably, and when the accents, dialects and phrases of the original inhabitants of the land were added to the mix, it became evident that Afrikaans was a completely different animal to its Dutch parent.
The Hottentots, original Koi inhabitants as well as the Xhosa and the Zulu people all contributed in their fashion to the language as it spoken today.
From this, three main dialects emerged, Cape Afrikaans, Orange River Afrikaans and Eastern Border Afrikaans. The Cape dialect is mostly enfused with the language spoken by the Malay slaves who worked in the Cape and spoke a form of broken Portuguese, the Orange River dialect developed with the influence of Koi languages and dialects developed in the Namakwaland and Griqualand West regions and the Eastern Border Afrikaans evolved from the settlers who moved East towards Natal from the Cape. >>>
From: History of the Afrikaans language in South Africa.
<<< This unique language "just grew' from the soil of South Africa. In the human melting pot of the Cape it was inevitable that, from the original Dutch spoken by the first settlers, a colloquial form would be evolved by people such as the Khoikhoi and slaves from Malaya, Indonesia, Madagascar and West Africa.
These diverse peoples all needed to communicate and a modified version of Dutch, with many words from the other languages, was used as a language common to all. It developed further as Huguenot settlers added words and altered the sound of other words.
The struggle to gain recognition for Afrikaans as a written language was directed and carried out from Paarl. The Language Route centres on Dal Josaphat where a number of farms and buildings are to be found in which many of the events relating to the struggle for recognition of the language and the First Afrikaans Language Movement took place. >>>
From: History of Afrikaans.
<<< Erroneously some have claimed the Afrikaans language to be the language of the 'Baas'. Afrikaans is the result of bringing together the East and the West, the North and the South. It was and should be the language that celebrates our cultural diversity rather than the language of exclusion. On the other hand those who attack Afrikaans is attacking not the language of the white man, but also the legacy that our slave stamouer have left behind in the development of this language. >>>
The above excerpt from: Slave Stamouers of South Africa.
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The Taal movement—Afrikaans.
- the main leaders in this movement were the Du Toit brothers in Paarl. Afrikaans (at the time almost always referred to as ‘die Taal’—the Language) was a spoken, not a written language. It was a simplified version of Dutch which probably had originated among the slaves and/or Khoikhoi servants. Because young children were raised mostly by nannies, this was the language most whites learned first. Over many generations, the Taal was usually the first language of young children. Dutch remained the official language of government and the Dutch Reformed Church and thus it had to be learned later. Dutch was the written language. >>>
From: Origins of Afrikaner Nationalism.
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While High Dutch was the official language of the region, a patois developed including “words from French, German, English, and Portuguese-Creole,” as well as those of the indigenous inhabitants. >>>
From:
An Africa to New Mexico Connection: Another Look at the Boers.
The Afrikaans language is distinct & homegrown which is unique to the Southern African region.
I like your discussion of the Afrikaans language. For more on it, visit this site:
Afrikaans wiki browser
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