Afrikaans

Afrikaans (??nativename|??)
Spoken in:	??
Region:	??
Total speakers:	Native speakers: 6,000,000+ Secondary speakers: 10,000,000+
Genetic classification:	Indo-European  Germanic   West    Low German     Low Franconian      Dutch       Afrikaans
Language codes
ISO 639-1	—??
ISO 639-2	—??
ISO/DIS 639-3	??2
SIL (2000)	obsolete??
See also: Language - List of languages

Afrikaans is a West Germanic language mainly spoken in South Africa and Namibia. It was originally the dialect that developed among the Afrikaner Protestant settlers and the indentured or slave workforce brought to the Cape area in southwestern South Africa by the Dutch East India Company (Dutch language: Verenigde 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, a few from Scotland, and various other countries. The indentured workers and slaves were Malays, and Malagasy in addition to the indigenous Khoi and Bushmen.

Research by J. A. Heese indicates that until 1807, 36.8% of the ancestors of the White Afrikaans speaking population were Dutch, 35% were German, 14.6% were French and 7.2% non-white (of African and/or Asian origins). Heese's figures are questioned by other researchers, however, and especially the non-white component quoted by Heese is very much in doubt.

A sizeable minority of those who spoke Afrikaans as a first language were not white. The dialect became known as "Cape Dutch". Later, Afrikaans was sometimes also referred to as "African Dutch" or "Kitchen Dutch". Afrikaans was considered a Dutch dialect until the early 20th century, when it began to be widely recognized as a distinct language, despite being more closely related to Dutch than most of the official dialects in the geographic area of the Netherlands. The name Afrikaans is simply the Dutch word for African, i.e. the African form of the Dutch language.

History

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 proper European Dutch. By the mid-19th century, more and more was appearing in Afrikaans, which was very much still regarded as a spoken regional dialect. The first Afrikaans grammars and dictionaries were published in 1875 by the Genootskap vir Regte Afrikaners (Society for Real Afrikaners) in Cape Town. Official government proclamation of Afrikaans as a distinct language from Dutch came in 1925. The official languages of the Union of South Africa were English and Dutch until that time. Dutch was replaced as an official language by Afrikaans.

Besides vocabulary, the most striking difference from Dutch is its much more regular grammar, which is likely the result of mutual interference with one or more creole languages based on the Dutch language spoken by the relatively large number of non-Dutch speakers (Khoisan, Khoikhoi, German, French, Cape Malay, and speakers of different African languages) during the formation period of the language in the second half of the 17th century. In 1710, slaves outnumbered free settlers, and the language was developing among speakers who had little occasion to write or analyse their new dialect.

There are a lot of different theories about how Afrikaans came to be. The Afrikaans School has long seen Afrikaans as a natural development from the South-Hollandic Dutch dialect, but has also only considered the Afrikaans as spoken by the whites. The Afrikaan School has also rejected all alternative ideas.

Most linguistics scholars today are certain that Afrikaans has been influenced by creole languages based on the South-Holland Dutch dialect. It is very hard to find out how this influence took place, since there is almost no material written in the Dutch-based creole languages: only a few sentences found in unrelated books often written by non-speakers.

Although much of the vocabulary of Afrikaans reflects its origins in 17th century South-Hollandic Dutch, it also contains words borrowed from Indonesian languages, Malay (the oldest known written Afrikaans uses Arabic script and was intended for use among Cape Town's Muslims), Portuguese, French, Khoi and San dialects, English, isiXhosa and many other languages. Consequently, many words in Afrikaans are very different from Dutch, as demonstrated by the names of different fruits:

AFRIKAANS	DUTCH	ENGLISH
piesang*	banaan	banana
lemoen	sinaasappel	orange
suurlemoen**	citroen	lemon

• from Malay pisang (a word that is known to the Dutch through their Dutch East Indies history)

• suur = sour (which is essentially the same as the Dutch word 'zuur').

(Pisang is also a lesser used Dutch word for banana)

Grammar

Orthography

Comparison with Dutch, German and English

Sociolinguistics

It is also widely spoken in Namibia, where it has had constitutional recognition as a national, not official, language since independence in 1990. Prior to independence, Afrikaans, along with German, had equal status as an official language. There is a much smaller number of Afrikaans speakers among Zimbabwe's white minority, but most left the country in 1980.

Many South Africans living and working in Australia, New Zealand, Canada, the United States and the United Kingdom are also Afrikaans speakers.

Afrikaans has been influential in the development of South African English. Many Afrikaans loanwords have found their way into South African English, such as "veld", "Braai", "boomslang", and "lekker". A few words in standard English are derived from Afrikaans, such as "Trek", "spoor", and, of course, apartheid.

In 1976, high school students in Soweto began the rebellion that contributed to the end of apartheid and the whites-only government of South Africa. This has been credited to that government's decision that Afrikaans rather than English be used as the language of instruction in non-White schools. However, many historians argue that the language issue was largely a smokescreen. Afrikaans is more widely spoken than English (and is, in fact, spoken by a majority of residents in two of South Africa's nine provinces), so most children may not have objected to the use of Afrikaans per se. Rather, it was the further directive, within the instructional language directive, that non-White (i.e., Black, Coloured and Indian) South African children be denied instruction in all but the most basic topics of mathematics, sciences, fine arts, etc., on the theory they would never need to know those subjects because they would never have occaision to use such an education. See History of South Africa.

Under South Africa's multiracial Constitution of 1994, Afrikaans remains an official language, but there are now nine other official languages, in addition to English, with which it has equal status. The new dispensation means that Afrikaans is often downgraded 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, but not in Afrikaans.

Although these moves have angered Afrikaans speakers, the language has remained strong, with Afrikaans newspapers and magazines continuing to have wide circulations, and a pay-TV channel in Afrikaans called KykNet being launched in 1999 and an Afrikaans music channel, MK89, in 2005.

Although Afrikaans has diverged from Dutch over the past three centuries, it still shares 85 per cent of its vocabulary with that language, and Afrikaans speakers are able to learn Dutch within a comparatively short amount of time. Native Dutch pick up Afrikaans even more quickly, due to its simple grammar. This has enabled Dutch companies to outsource their Call centre operations to South Africa, thereby taking advantage of lower labour costs.

Afrikaans phrases