Afrikaans

Afrikaans
Pronunciation	[ɐfriˈkɑːns]
Spoken in
Region	Southern Africa
Total speakers	over 6 million (native) between 15–23 million (total)[n 1]
Ranking	99
Language family	Indo-European Germanic West Germanic Low Franconian Dutch Afrikaans
Official status
Official language in	South Africa
Regulated by	Die Taalkommissie
Language codes
ISO 639-1	af
ISO 639-2	afr
ISO 639-3	afr
Linguasphere
Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode.

Afrikaans is a West Germanic language, mainly spoken in South Africa and Namibia. It is a daughter language of Dutch, originating in its 17th century dialects, collectively referred to as Cape Dutch.^{[n 2]} Although Afrikaans borrowed from languages such as Malay, Portuguese, the Bantu languages or the Khoisan languages, an estimated 90 to 95 percent of Afrikaans vocabulary is ultimately of Dutch origin.^{[n 3]} Therefore, differences with Dutch often lie in a more regular morphology, grammar, and spelling of Afrikaans.^{[n 4]} There is a degree of mutual intelligibility between the two languages—especially in written form—although it is easier for Dutch-speakers to understand Afrikaans than the other way round.^{[n 5]}

With about 6 million native speakers in South Africa, or 13.3 percent of the population, it is the third most spoken mother tongue in the country.^[1][2] It has the widest geographical and racial distribution of all official languages, and is widely spoken and understood as a second or third language.^{[n 6]} It is the majority language of the western half of South Africa—the provinces of the Northern Cape and Western Cape—and the primary language of the coloured and white communities.^{[n 7]} In neighbouring Namibia, Afrikaans is spoken in 11 percent of households, mainly concentrated in the capital Windhoek and the southern regions of Hardap and Karas.^{[n 8]} Widely spoken as a second language, it is a lingua franca of Namibia.^{[n 9]}

While the number of total speakers of Afrikaans is unknown, estimates range between 15 and 23 million.^{[n 1]}

Vowel sounds^[3]

Orthography

There are many parallels to the Dutch orthography conventions and those used for Afrikaans. There are 26 letters.

In Afrikaans, many consonants are dropped from the earlier Dutch spelling. For example, slechts ('only') in Dutch becomes slegs in Afrikaans. Part of this is because the spelling of Afrikaans words is considerably more phonemic than that of Dutch. For example, Afrikaans and some Dutch dialects make no distinction between /s/ and /z/, having merged the latter into the former; while the word for "south" is written ‹zuid› in Dutch, it is spelled ‹suid› in Afrikaans to represent this merger. Similarly, the Dutch digraph‹ij› is written as ‹y›, except where it replaces the Dutch suffix –lijk, as in waarschijnlijk > waarskynlik.

Another difference is the indefinite article, 'n in Afrikaans and een in Dutch. 'A book' is 'n boek in Afrikaans, whereas it is either een boek or 'n boek in Dutch. This 'n is usually pronounced as just a weak vowel, [ə].

The diminutive suffix in Afrikaans is ‹-jie›, whereas in Dutch it is ‹-je›, hence "a little bit" is bietjie in Afrikaans and beetje in Dutch.

The letters ‹c›, ‹q›, ‹x›, and ‹z› occur almost exclusively in borrowings from French, English, Greek and Latin. This is usually because words that had ‹c› and ‹ch› in the original Dutch are spelled with ‹k› and ‹g›, respectively, in Afrikaans. Similarly original ‹qu› and ‹x› are spelt ‹kw› and ‹ks› respectively. For example ‹ekwatoriaal› instead of ‹equatoriaal›, and ‹ekskuus› instead of ‹excuus›.

The vowels with diacritics in non-loanword Afrikaans are: ‹á, é, è, ê, ë, í, î, ï, ó, ô, ú, û, ý›. Diacritics are ignored when alphabetising, though they are still important, even when typing the diacritic forms may be difficult.

Initial apostrophes

A few short words in Afrikaans take initial apostrophes. In modern Afrikaans, these words are always written in lower case (except if the entire line is uppercase), and if they occur at the beginning of a sentence, the next word is capitalised. Three examples of such apostrophed words are 'k, 't, 'n. The last (the indefinite article) is the only apostrophed word that is common in written Afrikaans, since the other examples are shortened versions of other words (ek and het respectively).^[4]

Here are a few examples:

The apostrophe and the following letter are regarded as two separate characters, and are never written using a single glyph, although a single character variant of the indefinite article appears in Unicode, ʼn.

Table of characters

For more on the pronunciation of the below letters, see Wikipedia:IPA for Dutch and Afrikaans.

History

The Afrikaans language originated mainly from Dutch^[5][6] and developed in South Africa. It is often said that Dutch and Afrikaans are mutually intelligible, however, this is often not true^[7][8] as Afrikaans tends to have inherited a lot of its vocabulary and language characteristics from other languages such as Portuguese, Malay, Bantu languages and Khoisan languages^[9][10], but despite this, it is still possible for a Dutch person to understand an Afrikaans person quite well. As well as this, Afrikaans is also grammatically far simpler than Dutch, and a large amount of unique slang words are present in Afrikaans, which are absent in Dutch. It was considered a Dutch dialect in South Africa up until the late 19th century when it became recognised as a distinct language.^[11] A relative majority of the first settlers whose descendants today are the Afrikaners 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 workers and slaves who contributed to the development of Afrikaans were Asians (especially Malays), Malagasys, as well as the Khoi, Bushmen and Bantu peoples who also lived in the area. African creole people in the early 1700s — documented on the cases of Hendrik Bibault and patriarch Oude Ram — were the first to call themselves Afrikaner (Africans). This is where Afrikaans got its name from.^[12] Only much later in the second half of the 19th century did the Boers adopt this attribution, too,^[13] and referred to the Khoi-slave descendants as Coloureds.^[12]

Dialects

Following early dialectical studies of Afrikaans, it was theorised that three main historical dialects probably existed after 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.^[14]

Expatriate geolect

Although mainly spoken in South Africa and Namibia, smaller Afrikaans-speaking populations live in Australia, Botswana, Canada, Lesotho, Malawi, New Zealand, Swaziland, the United States, Zambia and Zimbabwe.^[15] Most, if not all, Afrikaans speaking people living outside of Africa are emigrants who have left South Africa. Because of emigration and migrant labour, there are possibly over 100,000 Afrikaans speakers in the United Kingdom. The geolect of Afrikaans spoken outside South Africa in these predominantly English-speaking countries has been referred to as "soutmielie".^{[16][17][18][19]}

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 ("Conversation between Claus Truthsayer and John Doubter"), 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 owing 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.^[20][21] This monumental work established Afrikaans as 'n suiwer en oordentlike taal, that is "a pure and proper 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.^[22]

Onse Vader wat in die hemele is, laat U naam geheilig word. Laat U koninkryk kom, laat U wil geskied, soos in die hemel net so ook op die aarde. Gee ons vandag ons daaglikse brood, en vergeef ons ons skulde, soos ons ook ons skuldenaars vergewe. En lei ons nie in versoeking nie, maar verlos ons van die bose. Want aan U behoort die Koninkryk en die krag en die heerlikheid, tot in ewigheid. Amen.

Grammar

In Afrikaans grammar, there is no distinction between the infinitive and present forms of verbs, with the exception of the verbs 'to be' and 'to have':

In addition, verbs do not conjugate differently depending on the subject. For example,

The preterite looks exactly like the present but is indicated by adverbs like toe, the exception being 'to be'.

The perfect tense is sometimes preferred over the preterite in literature where the preterite would be used in Dutch or English, for example, in the case of the verb to drink:

In other respects, the perfect tense in Afrikaans follows Dutch and English.

Afrikaans phrases

Afrikaans is a very centralised language, meaning that most of the vowels are pronounced in a very centralised (i.e. very schwa-like) way. Although there are many different dialects and accents, the transcription should be fairly standard.

Note: The word Afrikaans means African (in the general sense) in the Dutch language. Although considered incorrect, the word Zuid-Afrikaans, lit. "South African", is sometimes used to avoid confusion when referring specifically to the Afrikaans language. This problem also occurs in Afrikaans itself, resolved by using the words Afrika and Afrikaan to distinguish from Afrikaans(e) and Afrikaner respectively.

A sentence having the same meaning and written identically in Afrikaans and English is:

• My pen was in my hand. ([məi pɛn vas ən məi hɑnt])

Similarly the sentence:

• My hand is in warm water. ([məi hɑnt əs ən varəm vɑˑtər])

has almost identical meaning in Afrikaans and English although the Afrikaans warm corresponds more closely in meaning to English hot.

Sample text in Afrikaans

Psalm 23. 1983 Translation:

1. Die Here is my Herder, ek kom niks kort nie.
2. Hy laat my in groen weivelde rus. Hy bring my by waters waar daar vrede is.
3. Hy gee my nuwe krag. Hy lei my op die regte paaie tot eer van Sy naam.
4. Selfs al gaan ek deur donker dieptes, sal ek nie bang wees nie, want U is by my. In U hande is ek veilig.

Translation Dependant:

1. Die Here is my Herder, niks sal my ontbreek nie.
2. Hy laat my neerlê in groen weivelde; na waters waar rus is, lei Hy my heen.
3. Hy verkwik my siel; Hy lei my in die spore van geregtigheid, om sy Naam ontwil.
4. Al gaan ek ook in 'n dal van doodskaduwee, ek sal geen onheil vrees nie; want U is met my: u stok en u staf die vertroos my.
5. U berei die tafel voor my aangesig teenoor my teëstanders; U maak my hoof vet met olie; my beker loop oor.
6. Net goedheid en guns sal my volg al die dae van my lewe; en ek sal in die huis van die HERE bly in lengte van dae.

1. The Lord is my shepherd I shall not be in want.
2. He makes me lie down in green pastures, he leads me beside quiet waters.
3. He restores my soul. He guides me in paths of righteousness for his name's sake.
4. Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil for you are with me; your rod and staff they comfort me.

Original (Suiwer Afrikaans) Onse Vader:

Onse Vader wat in die hemel is, laat U Naam geheilig word; laat U koninkryk kom; laat U wil geskied op die aarde, net soos in die hemel. Gee ons vandag ons daaglikse brood; en vergeef ons ons skulde soos ons ons skuldenaars vergewe en laat ons nie in die versoeking nie maar verlos ons van die Bose Want aan U behoort die koninkryk en die krag en die heerlikheid tot in ewigheid. Amen

Sociolinguistics

Geographical distribution of Afrikaans in South Africa: proportion of the population that speaks Afrikaans at home.

0–20%      20–40%      40–60%

60–80%      80–100%      No population

Geographical distribution of Afrikaans in South Africa: density of Afrikaans home-language speakers.

<1 /km²      1–3 /km²      3–10 /km²      10–30 /km²      30–100 /km²

100–300 /km²      300–1000 /km²      1000–3000 /km²      >3000 /km²

Afrikaans is the first language of over 80% of Coloured South Africans (3.1 million people) and approximately 60% of White South Africans (2.5 million). Around 200,000 black South Africans speak it as their first language.^[23] Large numbers of Bantu-speaking and English-speaking South Africans also speak it as their second language.

Some state that the term Afrikaanses should be used as a term for all people who speak Afrikaans, without respect to ethnic origin, instead of "Afrikaners", which refers to an ethnic group, or "Afrikaanssprekendes" (lit. people that speak Afrikaans). Linguistic identity has not yet established that one term be favoured above another and all three are used in common parlance.^[24]

Geographical distribution of Afrikaans in Namibia.

It is also widely spoken in Namibia, where it has had constitutional recognition as a national, but not official, language since independence in 1990. Prior to independence, Afrikaans had equal status with German as an official language. There is a much smaller number of Afrikaans speakers among Zimbabwe's white minority, as most have left the country since 1980. Afrikaans was also a medium of instruction for schools in Bophuthatswana Bantustan.^[25]

Many South Africans living and working in Belgium, the Netherlands, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, the United States, Kuwait and the United Kingdom are also Afrikaans-speaking. There are Afrikaans websites, among them, news sites such as http://www.nuus24.com, and radio broadcasts over the web, such as those from Radio Sonder Grense and Radio Pretoria.

Afrikaans has been influential in the development of South African English. Many Afrikaans loanwords have found their way into South African English, such as 'bakkie' ("pickup truck"), 'braai' ("barbecue"), 'tekkies' ("sneakers"). A few words in standard English are derived from Afrikaans, such as 'aardvark' (lit. "earth pig"), 'trek' ("pioneering journey", in Afrikaans lit. "pull" but used also for "migrate"), "spoor" ("animal track"), "veld" ("Southern African grassland" in Afrikaans lit. "field"), "commando" from Afrikaans "kommando" meaning small fighting unit, "boomslang" ("tree snake") and apartheid ("segregation"; more accurately "apartness" or "the state or condition of being apart").

In 1976, high school students in Soweto began a rebellion in response to the government's decision that Afrikaans be used as the language of instruction for half the subjects taught in non-White schools (with English continuing for the other half). Although English is the mother tongue of only 8.2% of the population, it is the language most widely understood, and the second language of a majority of South Africans.^[26] Afrikaans is more widely spoken than English in the Northern and Western Cape provinces, several hundred kilometers from Soweto. The Black community's opposition to Afrikaans and preference for continuing English instruction was underscored when the government rescinded the policy one month after the uprising: 96% of Black schools chose English (over Afrikaans or native languages) as the language of instruction.^[27]

Under South Africa's Constitution of 1996, Afrikaans remains an official language, and has equal status to English and nine other languages. The new policy means that the use of Afrikaans is now, in effect, often reduced in favour of English, or to accommodate the other official languages. In 1996, for example, the South African Broadcasting Corporation reduced the amount of television airtime in Afrikaans, while South African Airways dropped its Afrikaans name Suid-Afrikaanse Lugdiens from its livery. Similarly, South Africa's diplomatic missions overseas now only display the name of the country in English and their host country's language, and not in Afrikaans.

In spite of these moves, the language has remained strong, and Afrikaans newspapers and magazines continue to have large circulation figures. Indeed, the Afrikaans-language general-interest family magazine Huisgenoot has the largest readership of any magazine in the country. In addition, a pay-TV channel in Afrikaans called KykNet was launched in 1999, and an Afrikaans music channel, MK, in 2005. A large number of Afrikaans books are still published every year, mainly by the publishers Human & Rousseau, Tafelberg Uitgewers, Struik, and Protea Boekhuis.

Afrikaans has two monuments erected in its honour. The first was erected in Burgersdorp, South Africa, in 1893, and the second, better-known Afrikaans Language Monument (Afrikaanse Taalmonument) was built in Paarl, South Africa, in 1975.

When the British design magazine Wallpaper described Afrikaans as "one of the world's ugliest languages" in its September 2005 article about the Monument, South African billionaire Johann Rupert (chairman of the Richemont group), responded by withdrawing advertising for brands such as Cartier, Van Cleef & Arpels, Montblanc and Alfred Dunhill from the magazine.^[28] The author of the article, Bronwyn Davies, was an English-speaking South African.

Modern Dutch and Afrikaans share 85-plus per cent of their vocabulary. Afrikaans speakers are able to learn Dutch within a comparatively short time. Native Dutch speakers pick up written Afrikaans even more quickly, due to its simplified grammar, whereas understanding spoken Afrikaans might need more effort. Afrikaans speakers can learn Dutch pronunciation with little training. This has enabled Dutch and Belgian companies to outsource their call centre operations to South Africa.^[29]

Future of Afrikaans

Post-apartheid South Africa has seen a loss of preferential treatment by the government for Afrikaans, in terms of education, social events, media (TV and Radio), and general status throughout the country, given that it now shares its place as official language with ten other languages. Nevertheless, Afrikaans remains more prevalent in the media - radio, newspapers and television^[30] - than all the other official languages, except for English. More than 300 titles in Afrikaans are published per year.^[31]

Through all the problems of depreciation and migration that Afrikaans faces today, the language still competes well, with Afrikaans DSTV channels (pay channels) and high newspaper and CD sales as well as popular internet sites. A resurgence in Afrikaans popular music (from the late 1990s) has added new momentum to the language especially among the younger generations in South Africa. The latest contribution to building the Afrikaans language is the availability of pre-school educational CDs and DVDs. These are also popular with large Afrikaans-speaking expatriate communities seeking to retain the language in family context. After years of inactivity, the Afrikaans language cinema is also starting to reactivate. With the 2007 film Ouma se slim kind, the first full length Afrikaans movie since Paljas from 1998, a new era for Afrikaans cinema started. Several short-films have been created and more feature-length movies such as Poena is Koning and Bakgat, both from 2008 have been produced.

Afrikaans also seems to be returning to the SABC. SABC3 stated in the beginning of 2009 that it will increase Afrikaans programming because of the needs of the "growing Afrikaans-language market and their need for working capital as Afrikaans advertising is the only advertising that sells in the current South African TV market". In April 2009, SABC3 started showing several Afrikaans-language programmes.^[32]

Further latent support for the language is the de-politicised view of younger-generation South Africans: it is less and less viewed as "the language of the oppressor" and this is supported to a large extent by new-generation Afrikaans youths openly supporting a reformation of old Afrikaner nationalist racial policy.

See also

• Aardklop Arts Festival
• Arabic Afrikaans
• Languages of South Africa
• List of Afrikaans language poets
• List of English words of Afrikaans origin
• Afrikaans speaking population in South Africa
• South African Translators' Institute
• Differences between Afrikaans and Dutch

Notes

References

Bibliography

Further reading

• Roberge, P. T. (2002), "Afrikaans – considering origins", Language in South Africa, Cambridge, United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press, ISBN 052153383X .

External links

• The Ethnologue: Afrikaans
• Wordgumbo: Afrikaans
• An introduction to Afrikaans
• The New South African - Afrikaans - More about South Africa's official languages.
• Learn Afrikaans Online
• Afrikaans pronunciation, vocabulary, grammar, culture
• Federasie van Afrikaanse Kultuurvereniginge (FAK) - Federation of Afrikaans Cultural Associations
• Afrikaanse Taal- en Kultuurvereniging (ATKV) - Afrikaans Language and Cultural Association

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