Afrikaans - Dutch-heritage African-culture

The Afrikaans language: an introduction

One of South Africa's two official languages - the other is English. It developed from the Dutch of the settlers of the region in the 17th century and is now seen as an independent language thanks only to the separate development of the two languages over the centuries.

How many speakers are there of the Afrikaans language?

Afrikaans is spoken by around 6 million people in South Africa and a small number in Namibia as well as a number of communities in other African nations and ex-pats around the world.

What Afrikaans language issues do I need to watch out for?

Afrikaans doesn't present many difficulties - apart from translating relevant concepts - and is very similar to the approach for Dutch.

Afrikaans is an Indo-European language derived from Dutch and thus classified as Low Franconian West Germanic. It is mainly spoken in South Africa and Namibia, with smaller numbers of speakers living in Botswana, Angola, Swaziland, Zimbabwe, Lesotho, Zambia, Australia, New Zealand, the United States, Canada, Taiwan and Argentina.^[1] Due to emigration and migrant labour, there are possibly over 100,000 Afrikaans speakers in the United Kingdom, with other substantial communities found in Brussels, Amsterdam, Perth, Mount Isa, Toronto and Auckland. It is the primary language used by two related ethnic groups in South Africa: the Afrikaans people (Afrikaners) and the Coloureds (in Afrikaans: kleurlinge or bruinmense – including Basters, Cape Malays and Griqua).

Afrikaans is the majority language of the western one-third of South Africa (Northern and Western Cape, in which it is spoken at home by 69% and 58% of the population, respectively). It is also the most common first language in the adjacent southern third of Namibia (Hardap and Karas, where it is the first language of 44% and 40% of the population, respectively).

Afrikaans and Dutch are largely mutually intelligible.

Afrikaans developed among the Dutch-speaking Protestant settlers, and the indentured or slave workforce of the Cape area in southwestern South Africa that was established by the Dutch East India Company (Dutch: Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie — VOC) between 1652 and 1705. A relative majority of these first settlers were from the United Provinces (now Netherlands), though there were also many from Germany, a considerable number from France, and some from Norway, Portugal, Scotland, and various other countries. The indentured workers and slaves were Asians, Malays, and Malagasys in addition to the indigenous Khoi and Bushmen.

The Afrikaans School has long seen Afrikaans as a natural development from the South-Hollandic Dutch dialect. Because of the absence of historical indication of the development of the dialect (language), some have implied Afrikaans to be a creolisation of conceptual Dutch. However, this theory is rather implausible since it implies that a language systematically developed out of a vocabulary. Furthermore, this theory would fail to explain the systematic process of simplification from dialectical 17th century Dutch to Afrikaans, its geographically widespread and cohesive nature and also the persistent structural similarities between Afrikaans and other regional Franconic dialects including West Flemish and Zeelandic. This indicates rather a linear, though isolated linguistic path.

Afrikaans also remains akin to other West-Germanic languages (except English) in that it remains a V2 language which features verb-final structures in subordinate clauses, just like Dutch and German.

Dialects

Following early dialectical studies of Afrikaans it was theorised that three main historical dialects probably existed before the Great Trek in the 1830s. These dialects are defined as the Northern Cape, Western Cape and Eastern Cape dialects. Remnants of these dialects still remain in present-day Afrikaans although the standardising effect of Standard Afrikaans has contributed to a great levelling of differences in modern times.

There is also a prison cant known as soebela, or sombela which is based on Afrikaans yet heavily influenced by Zulu. This language is used as a secret language in prison and is taught to initiates.

Expatriate geolect

The geolect of Afrikaans spoken outside South Africa in predominantly English-speaking countries have been referred to as "soutmielie".

Standardisation

The linguist Paul Roberge suggests that the earliest 'truly Afrikaans' texts are doggerel verse from 1795 and a dialogue transcribed by a Dutch traveller in 1825. Printed material among the Afrikaners at first used only standard European Dutch. By the mid-19th century, more and more were appearing in Afrikaans, which was very much still regarded as a set of regional dialects.

In 1861, L.H. Meurant published his Zamenspraak tusschen Klaas Waarzegger en Jan Twyfelaar, which is considered by some to be the first authoritative Afrikaans text. Abu Bakr Effendi also compiled his Arabic Afrikaans Islamic instruction book between 1862 and 1869, although this was only published and printed in 1877. The first Afrikaans grammars and dictionaries were published in 1875 by the Genootskap vir Regte Afrikaners ('Society for Real Afrikaners') in Cape Town.

The First and Second Boer Wars further strengthened the position of Afrikaans. The official languages of the Union of South Africa were English and Dutch until Afrikaans was subsumed under Dutch on 5 May 1925.

The main Afrikaans dictionary is the Woordeboek van die Afrikaanse Taal (WAT) (Dictionary of the Afrikaans Language), which is as yet incomplete due to the scale of the project, but the one-volume dictionary in household use is the Verklarende Handwoordeboek van die Afrikaanse Taal (HAT). The official orthography of Afrikaans is the Afrikaanse Woordelys en Spelreëls, compiled by Die Taalkommissie.

The Afrikaans Bible

A major landmark in the development of Afrikaans was the full translation of the Bible into the language. Prior to this most Cape Dutch-Afrikaans speakers had to rely on the Dutch Statenbijbel. The aforementioned Statenvertaling had its origins with the Synod of Dordrecht and was thus in an archaic form of Dutch. This rendered understanding difficult at best to Dutch and Cape Dutch speakers, moreover increasingly unintelligible to Afrikaans speakers.

C. P. Hoogehout, Arnoldus Pannevis, and Stephanus Jacobus du Toit were the first Afrikaans Bible translators. Important landmarks in the translation of the Scriptures were in 1878 with C. P. Hoogehout's translation of the Evangelie volgens Markus (Gospel of Mark), however this translation was never published. The manuscript is to be found in the South African National Library, Cape Town.

The first official Bible translation of the entire Bible into Afrikaans was in 1933 by J. D. du Toit, E. E. van Rooyen, J. D. Kestell, H. C. M. Fourie, and BB Keet.^[7][8] This monumental work established Afrikaans as a suiwer and oordentlike taal, i.e. a "pure" and "suitable language" for religious purposes, especially amongst the deeply Calvinist Afrikaans religious community that had hitherto been somewhat sceptical of a Bible translation out of the original Dutch language to which they were accustomed.

In 1983 there was a fresh translation in order to mark the 50th anniversary of the original 1933 translation and provide much needed revision. The final editing of this edition was done by E. P. Groenewald, A. H. van Zyl, P. A. Verhoef, J. L. Helberg, and W. Kempen.

Afrikaans Version of the Lord's Prayer. Onse Vader.

'Classic Dutch Protestant version of the Lord's Prayer. Onze Vader'.

Onze Vader die in de hemelen zijt, Uw Naam worde geheiligd; Uw koninkrijk kome; Uw wil geschiede, gelijk in de hemel alzo ook op de aarde. Geef ons heden ons dagelijks brood; en vergeef ons onze schulden, gelijk ook wij vergeven onze schuldenaren; en leidt ons niet in verzoeking, maar verlos ons van de boze. Want van U is het koninkrijk en de kracht en de heerlijkheid tot in eeuwigheid. Amen.