# Afrikaans vs. Dutch



## dihydrogen monoxide

How is Afrikaans different from Dutch? When did the Afrikaans, that was once Dutch, stop speaking in Netherlands. How did it evolve and was it influenced by Xhosa and other African languages in the area? Can I say that the difference between Afrikaans and Dutch are the same as with Dutch and Flemish? 
Was Afrikaans a dialect in Netherlands or was it Standard Dutch at that time when it was spoken in Netherlands. Notice here I'm using Afrikaans, but that language didn't have the name it has now. I know it originated from Netherlands and that is Indo-European and that it's not spoken now in Netherlands.
Would there be any Netherlands dialect that would be the closest to Afrikaans or is my statement wrong in this sentence?


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## Frank06

Hi,

Have you tried to look up a few things already? On the net, you'll find 100s of very informative websites on Afrikaans and Dutch. A search engine as google can help you.

Anyway:
- Afrikaans, an introduction, not too bad (Wikipedia);
- Development of Afrikaans 
- What is Afrikaans (die Roepstem/de Roepstem)
- Afrikaans
- Portal site with +/-100 links on Afrikaans
- Afrikaans: a list of +/- 100 links
- Afrikaans hoort by Nederlands, with a discussion forum in Afrikaans and Dutch (and a funny but slightly silly table that measures the distance to Standard Dutch which (rather typically) ignores the fact that Dutch is bifocal what the standard, well, standard*s* are concerned).
- ...



dihydrogen monoxide said:


> Can I say that the difference between Afrikaans and Dutch are the same as with Dutch and Flemish?


Do you mean East-Flemish or West-Flemish (Oost- en Westvlaams)? Or do you mean the standard Dutch as spoken in Flanders?
Anyway, Afrikaans isn't part of the Dutch-Flemish Taalunie.
If you just have a look at the morphology, the syntax... well, actually the grammar and the lexicon of Dutch and Afrikaans, you'll probably notice the differences and you can come to a conclusion yourself.

As for the pronunciation, there are many Afrikaans, Dutch and what you prefer to call Flemish radiostations on line.
The rare occasions in which we have a Afrikaans speaker on the Flemish tv, we get subtitles (but idem dito with speakers from the Netherlands). The rare occasions we have an Afrikaans speaker on the Flemish radio, his words aren't followed by a paraphrase or translation.



> Was Afrikaans a dialect in Netherlands


No, hence the name Afrikaans and not, for example, Scherpenisses or Bachten-de-Kuppens.



> or was it Standard Dutch at that time when it was spoken in Netherlands.


It wasn't spoken in the Low Countries. And, by the way, neither _was_ there a fully developped Standard Dutch in the Low Countries at that moment Afrikaans originated 5987 miles, 9635 km as the crow flies, or 5203 nautical miles as the duck swims more south.



> Would there be any Netherlands dialect that would be the closest to Afrikaans or is my statement wrong in this sentence?


Closest? In kilometers? Must be the Flemish dialect as spoken in Northern France.
Or do you mean something else by 'closest'? If so, what exactly do you mean? Can you give us some parameters so we have something to measure.

Groetjes,

Frank


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## dihydrogen monoxide

Frank06 said:


> Do you mean East-Flemish or West-Flemish (Oost- en Westvlaams)? Or do you mean the standard Dutch as spoken in Flanders?
> Anyway, Afrikaans isn't part of the Dutch-Flemish Taalunie.
> If you just have a look at the morphology, the syntax... well, actually the grammar and the lexicon of Dutch and Afrikaans, you'll probably notice the differences and you can come to a conclusion yourself.


If you divide it like that I mean all.



Frank06 said:


> It wasn't spoken in the Low Countries. And, by the way, neither _was_ there a fully developped Standard Dutch in the Low Countries at that moment Afrikaans originated 5987 miles, 9635 km as the crow flies, or 5203 nautical miles as the duck swims more south.


Dutch moved to South Africa, ergo brough their version of Dutch. What version of Dutch was it in Netherlands at that time and what version of Dutch did they bring? Afrikaans is based on Dutch, what kind of Dutch?



Frank06 said:


> Closest? In kilometers? Must be the Flemish dialect as spoken in Northern France.
> Or do you mean something else by 'closest'? If so, what exactly do you mean? Can you give us some parameters so we have something to measure.


Closest in phonology, grammar, syntax,morphology...


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## Frank06

Hi,



dihydrogen monoxide said:


> Dutch moved to South Africa, ergo brough their version of Dutch. What version of Dutch was it in Netherlands at that time and what version of Dutch did they bring? Afrikaans is based on Dutch, what kind of Dutch?


 
The history part in the Wiki-article and the article by M. Bas give a pretty good and short oversight. They both agree that it is basically western (south western dialects) Dutch dialects.

This can also be found back in the article "Ontwikkeling van Vroeë Afrikaans" (from _Inleiding tot die Afrikaanse Taalkunde_, 1989), in which E.H. Raidt stresses the mix of "die stedelike Nederlands in die taalgebruik van die hoeë amptenare" or "die stedelijke burgertaal van die 17de eeu" and "plattelandse Nederlandse streektale". She mentions "Hollandse, Utrechtse, Seeuse, Brabantse en Vlaamse dialeksprekers" ('Vlaams' here means West-Flemish - most linguists indeed like to divide it like that).

From 1700 on, it's becoming clear that the language is getting simplified. Between 1740 and 1775, the spoken language differed markedly from the language(s) in the Netherlands and Flanders (often called Kaaps-Nederlands or Kaaps-Hollands, a term which got used until the early 20th century).
In the last part of the 18th century, the language shows most features which can be identified as typically Afrikaans, though the term 'Afrikaans' started to get used from 1875 on. I am still paraphrasing Raidt here.

All this of course makes an abstraction of the many languages that _kept_ influencing Afrikaans, such as (obviously) Dutch, English, the indiginous African languages, but also German (mainly Low German), French, Portuguese, and probably many more.



> Closest in phonology, grammar, syntax,morphology...


And what are your specific parameters?

Groetjes,

Frank


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## the MASTER

I find it  it interesting that this outpost of Dutch began to differ so much from the 'mother tongue' whereas with English no such similar phenomenon occured (at least not to the point where it was considered as a different language). Were the Dutch in South Africa cut off completely from their forefathers, linguistically speaking?

Also I believe that there are heavy influences on Afrikaans from English, German and French as well as African languages. I would be interested to know what some of these are...


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## sokol

You might find this thread interesting: Afrikaans: Dialect or Creole?

The thing is that we seem to not know exactly what happened with Afrikaans. I left this other thread with a thought in my mind that probably Afrikaans could be a mix between the Boers' language and an Afrikaans Creole (and did say so there). But this of course only is a far-fetched theory of mine, based on no hard facts whatsoever.


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## Kevin Beach

the MASTER said:


> I find it  it interesting that this outpost of Dutch began to differ so much from the 'mother tongue' whereas with English no such similar phenomenon occured (at least not to the point where it was considered as a different language). Were the Dutch in South Africa cut off completely from their forefathers, linguistically speaking?
> 
> Also I believe that there are heavy influences on Afrikaans from English, German and French as well as African languages. I would be interested to know what some of these are...


Maybe the difference is because English is so widely spread around the world, whereas Dutch is basically limited to South Africa except in its home territories.

Until a time still within living memory, there were constant contacts between all non-American Anglophone parts of the world through the Empire administration.


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## Trader26

the MASTER said:


> I find it it interesting that this outpost of Dutch began to differ so much from the 'mother tongue' whereas with English no such similar phenomenon occured (at least not to the point where it was considered as a different language). Were the Dutch in South Africa cut off completely from their forefathers, linguistically speaking?
> 
> Also I believe that there are heavy influences on Afrikaans from English, German and French as well as African languages. I would be interested to know what some of these are...



Yes, the main reason why Afrikaans differs from Dutch is because the Dutch settlers in South Africa was cut off from having contact with the Netherlands after the British occupation. All of South Africa coastline was under British rule so there was very little to no contact with the Netherlands.

You will also have to take into account that the first Dutch settlers in South Africa spoke a variety of Dutch dialects because they came from different parts of the Netherlands each bringing their own dialect to South Africa. 

After hundreds of years living away from their motherland undre British rule with no contact with the Netherlands, because of the British controlling all the coastline the language started to develope differently.These Dutch settlers and their children and their children came into contact with indigenous African people, French/ German/ and English settlers and would borrow some words or use some words from other languages so that they could be easily understood. 

After 100's of years of isolation and having very little to no contact with the Netherlands these settlers started to speak AFrikaans. But I will go so far as to say that these settlers preserved most Dutch words because 90% of all Afrikaans words are still Dutch based and that a Afrikaans speaker and a Dutch speaker can still read each others language with few difficulties.


So to understand why Afrikaans differs from Dutch you would have to understand that these Dutch settlers were cut off from their motherland and if South Africa remained a Dutch colony Afrikaans would probably be the same as modern Dutch today.


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## an2net

Trader26 said:


> Yes, the main reason why Afrikaans differs from Dutch is because the Dutch settlers in South Africa was cut off from having contact with the Netherlands after the British occupation. All of South Africa coastline was under British rule so there was very little to no contact with the Netherlands.
> 
> You will also have to take into account that the first Dutch settlers in South Africa spoke a variety of Dutch dialects because they came from different parts of the Netherlands each bringing their own dialect to South Africa.




Hallo, Trader26!

It looks like we are the first two Afrikaners (Why does it almost sound like an insult nowadays?) to join this discussion about our native tongue.
I tend to disagree a bit on many of the things you concurred with:

My ancestors from the Cape, on my father's side go back to the early 1660's. They were German, not Dutch. They fled from Saxony after the 100 year's war to find a living in Amsterdam. There were quite a number of these Saxons from what we see in our surnames dating to those times.

They were senior officials (children of ship builders in Koenigstein) of the VOC, and thus had to adopt Dutch as their _second_ language. Understandably it was learnt from many Dutch sailors who were often the worst speakers of the language at that time. Part of the deal as officials of the VOC was the acquisition of slaves that was common on the spice route around the Cape. Of course the children were to a large extent raised by these slaves while the adults went along with their own business. That is why we have so many corruptions of Malaysian and Arabic words in the common parts of our language (e.g. baie (Dutch=veel), eina (English=ouch)).

The second, very important influence came from another result of the European religious wars: the French Hugenots. Many of the words in our language sounds exactly like the French word, just as it would in Flemish as compared to Dutch. The similarities in these two languages arose from the mixture of similar languages and not necessarily from the same group of people. It should be remembered, though, that the French people who would be most influenced by the Protestant religion would also be those nearest to the Dutch, thus we cannot conclude that they were completely separated at that time. It would also have been an easier decision for a Flemish speaking Frenchman to emigrate to "Dutch-speaking" South Africa, than somebody who did not understand these languages at all.

Ironically, the oldest record of written Afrikaans was in Arabic script! That testifies to where this language-in-the-making was concentrated before the British settled in the colony. The large immigration of Britons was around 1820, and the Groot Trek started in 1835. The poor Dutch could not live with the enforcement of English language and the treatment as almost criminals of people who continued to use "Dutch". There were no fancy Dutch-English books and efforts of "upliftment" that you would nowadays expect in South Africa; they were simply pushed out of the way as far as possible and neglected. My own grandfather learnt to write from the Dutch Bible in the early 20th century. The first Afrikaans translation was only in the 1930's! In my experience, the smallest dialect of Afrikaans is found around the cities of the two Boer-Republics.

The richest dialects are found where people learnt freely to speak the language and this one only: In the western and norther parts of the Northern Cape Province of recently. The indiginous coloured people regularly associated them with these farmers and learned to speak their language. Whether it was out of respect or necessity is difficult to establish, especially after "Apartheid" happened to us. It is still amongst these locals who still did not find much reason to travel around the country, that you can hear the most interesting word-formations of Afrikaans imaginable. The more they travelled, the more anglisisms were adopted into our language, and more of the original got lost.

"Apartheid" also brought our language a favour as far as it impoverished the coloured peoples and thus they too have much less English influence upon their language than we white people. In the remote regions and amongst some coloured groups you will find a rhythmicity in Afrikaans that is not present in any Germanic language--the most important inheritance in my mind, from the indigenous languages of South Africa.

Influences from black languages and even the San of the Kalahari is minimal because these people did not mingle with the Afrikaans farmers as regularly as did the coloured Hottentot-descendants and Cape slave-descendants. A nice example of the previous close relationship can be found in the tragedy that occurred during the Anglo-Boer War south of Kakamas when the Hottentot- and slave-descendants sided with the British and turned the skills the farmers tought them against themselves! The differences in our languages arose from the separation since that war. The local white's language is much more like that of the late Jan Spies who came from southern Namibia, while that of the coloureds are something completely unique in comparison. All these differences are now slowly disappearing as the urbanisation amongst us Afrikaans-speakers is excellerating, and computers are not the most innocent of influences in this regard.

Before my note gets too long, ek hoop 'ie hierie briefie was te lank na julle smaak nie! Die triek lê daarin ommie woorde te verkort sorat die ritme van die taal baie sterker uitkom en 'ie klanke sagter raak. Die grootste, ou Afrikaner-digters het absoluut uitstekende voorbeelde van hoe dit gepraat was, vir ons gelos. Mooi voorbeelde vannie ou taal en sy vorming uit Nederlands kan in hul werk gesien en gehore word. Baia van ons boeke oor ons taal is deur steed'linge geskryf sônner erkenning van die erfenis in ons platt'land. Moenie in daarie gat val nie, asseblief! (Verskoon, ek is bietjie aspris mettie plat spelling oorlat ek 'n slag 'ie kans kry om te wys!) En, julle annertaliges is welkom om meer te vra!

Groete.

an2net


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## Trader26

Hello An2net 

I'm a Afrikaans speaker of Flemish/ Scottish and French descendents.

I agree with you that Afrikaans was influenced by different languages and that the Dutch East Indian Company also played a role in the developing of the Afrikaans language. 

But I also see the way that Afrikaans developed in no way different than that of say for instance French spoken in Qubec, Canada or the way Brazilian Portuguese differs from European Portuguese.

I still think the decision of the Afrikaners to replace written Dutch with written Afrikaans in 1925 was a stupid decision for various reasons. I personally feel that if we have kept standard written Dutch our languages would be far more stronger in the world today. We could have always spoken our own "dialect" Afrikaans but when we were writing we should have kept Dutch. In South Africa today the Afrikaans language is under pressure of dying out because the government favours English. Former Afrikaans Universities are being forced to offer English as the only medium of education. Slowly but surely the language are being wiped out in favour of English. If we have kept written Dutch we would have more support and resources to fall back on and ensure the language survives.

I personally feel Dutch should be re-imported as standard written language of the Afrikaners to prevent the loss of the Afrikaans language. The same thing happend in Belgium, to prevent Flemish from being overtaken by French, standard written Dutch was imported and it worked. Today in Belgium people still speak their own "Flemish dialects" but they write standard Dutch. The Flemish language is far stronger today than it was on it's own opressed by French.

Hier onder is nog 'n artikel oor die ontwikkeling van Afrikaans. Dit is in Nederlands maar behoort geen moeite te wees vir 'n Afrikaans sprekende om te lees en te verstaan nie. Dit bewys net weer dat Afrikaans taal en Nederlands taal maar een taal is en dat Nederlands volgens my weer die skryftaal van die Afrikaners moet word om te verhoed dat die taal verlore gaan onder Engels.

*De ontwikkeling van het Afrikaans* 

Het Afrikaans heeft zich ontwikkeld uit het zeventiende-eeuwse Hollands: *De Oost-Indische compagnie (VOC)* koos in de 17e eeuw de Kaap de Goede Hoop als rustplaats op haar weg naar Indië. Op de lange zeereizen had men behoefte aan een vast station, waar vers eten en drinken aan boord kon worden gehaald, zieken konden worden achtergelaten enz. [...]
*
** Lees hier verder.

Gelieve ook de WR-regels te lezen...
*


> *Respect intellectual property.
> No plagiarized content is allowed. No copyrighted material may be inserted  into posts except as indicated here:
> Minor fair use excerpts (one or two) from dictionaries are permitted. Always  acknowledge the source.
> Quotes and translations of prose up to 4 sentences are permitted.*


*Frank, moderator EHL*​


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## an2net

Hallo Trader26!

It seems like we are not going to get an agreement because I am afraid that changing the official written language to Dutch is not going to improve Afrikaans' position as a minor language in the current political situation.

Our school system is making a lot of our young Afrikaans speakers hesitant to write anything other than English already, because most of the advanced literature is only available in English. This is not a local problem, but a global one. German is suffering from the same anglicanation than every other major language in the world, simply because English is much more available.

To change the written form of Afrikaans to Dutch will simply improve the position of English because Dutch is currently suffering from the English influence in their own language.

I love the influence of illiteracy upon Afrikaans because it has an obvious enrichment-effect on our language. The Afrikaners of the early 20th century decided to use their political position to improve the "purer" use of Afrikaans. There may be 6 million Afrikaners (white and coloured) in South Africa, but amongst all people who went to school before about 1974, you can still easily communicate in our own language, especially if you use some of the "leenwoorde" from the African languages to support your conversation. It is frequently easier to use Afrikaans than English, especially in the more rural regions.

I believe that the people from these regions will never want to have another written language because Afrikaans is so much simpler, phonetically spelled, and flexible to accommodate "leenwoorde" from African languages, including the old Hottentot languages such as Koranna, which I believe is extinct since the 1950's. It was taken over by Afrikaans with local inclusions of the old language that we find in place names such as Prieska and Kakamas. We also refer to plants such as the N*oeniebos from which Noenieput was derived (the * is supposed to represent a click from the front of the tongue, which was lost in the Afrikaans name of the place). The now famous Ghaap (Hoodia gordonii) is another example. So is farm names like Ghams (which I refuse to translate because of its erotic connotations) and Areachap.

We are talking about people who are proud of the language heritage in South Africa rather than in Europe. Many of them preferred to stay illiterate because they never needed to write anything. The new political dispensation brought a strong urbanisation which created a strong need for these people to learn to write. This favours a phonetical rather than unknown language. They will not recognise the Dutch words like you and me. Even my father, who studied a bit of Latin and Dutch as part of legal training finds it difficult to recognise and write some words, more than me who was married to a German and thus have a good feeling for word flexion of the germanic languages.

If every speaker of Afrikaans will do his bit and use every opportunity to write good Afrikaans, the language will survive. I am in a healthcare profession and love to change terms into good Afrikaans for doctors preferring to request work for me in Afrikaans. I teach my students to do the same. It can definitely be contageous. I find that one of my worldwide known colleagues is interested in the Afrikaans terms even though his mother tongue is English. This indicates some respect for Afrikaans and potential to survive whatever comes along our way.

Further oppression by introducing Dutch as the written form may damage these existing structures that support it currently. Try to write Afrikaans poetry in Dutch! This is impossible! The moment I have to go to a more formal language I do like the Dutch and German speakers, I write English and do not overdo it. I heard my first English as a 9-year old and was taught until matric by mostly British English speakers, when I wrote the exam as a first language. My father has a Statenbijbel that is more than 100 years old. I can easily read the gothic script to the surprise of many family members. But it stays a language that I cannot write at all. I believe the written form of Dutch is currently restricted to legal practitioners and other post matric practitioners in Afrikaans. It will be unfair to expect our children and ourselves to learn this language which is so much different from ours already. The Flemish literature we had in school was for reading only, we wrote our examinations on it in Afrikaans!

I can also read Greek in the greek script and slavic languages in cyrillic, although I know only the meaning of single words of them. Those people understand what I read, but I do not have a clue myself. This is an advantage of phonetically written languages. It becomes easy to write once you can talk it. In a way it is like maths or my version of medical Afrikaans which contains a lot of africanised Latin and Greek terms. The closer the written form is to the spoken form, the easier the writing of it. I do not like maths because of the big difference in this aspect, and so is it with many of our children.

I would like to convince you that Dutch is not a solution to our problem, but individual effort to use it whenever we are allowed, is.

Kind regards,

An2net


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## Joannes

Trader26 said:


> But I also see the way that Afrikaans developed in no way different than that of say for instance French spoken in Qubec, Canada or the way Brazilian Portuguese differs from European Portuguese.


I beg to differ, but since I don't feel like repeating myself over and over (and bother people by doing that ), I'd rather just refer to this previous thread on the development of Afrikaans.



Trader26 said:


> I still think the decision of the Afrikaners to replace written Dutch with written Afrikaans in 1925 was a stupid decision for various reasons. I personally feel that if we have kept standard written Dutch our languages would be far more stronger in the world today. We could have always spoken our own "dialect" Afrikaans but when we were writing we should have kept Dutch. In South Africa today the Afrikaans language is under pressure of dying out because the government favours English. Former Afrikaans Universities are being forced to offer English as the only medium of education. Slowly but surely the language are being wiped out in favour of English. If we have kept written Dutch we would have more support and resources to fall back on and ensure the language survives.
> 
> I personally feel Dutch should be re-imported as standard written language of the Afrikaners to prevent the loss of the Afrikaans language. The same thing happend in Belgium, to prevent Flemish from being overtaken by French, standard written Dutch was imported and it worked. Today in Belgium people still speak their own "Flemish dialects" but they write standard Dutch. The Flemish language is far stronger today than it was on it's own opressed by French.


 
Dutch was never _re_-imported in Flanders. There was the emergence of a standard language, which was the same as the one that had more or less been established in the North. And though it is true that this standard language probably helped to give Dutch more recognition in Belgium, the prestige of Dutch rather grew together with the economic status of its speakers, as so often is the case and as had been the reason why important decisions in Belgium were taken in French until mid 20th century.

The situation in South Africa now is completely different. English is a supercow in the language field. I don't think there would be many Afrikaner supporters to all write Dutch again. Why would you anyway? It's not always fun not to have a written standard for the language you actually speak, believe me, I know. People would in part lose their affinity with Afrikaans, which is probably more important for the survival of Afrikaans than a strong linguistic institution would be. You shouldn't forget the large number of second language speakers of Afrikaans - they don't feel anything about Dutch.

Don't get me wrong: I think it's a shame that there barely is any cultural exchange between Afrikaans and Dutch speaking communities (The same goes for the Dutch speaking communities of Suriname and the Antilles, for that matter). It would be great to have a channel on which all of those would be united in some way, having more mutual understanding and acquaintance as a result. But I do not think it would have a great impact on the status of Afrikaans in South Africa.


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## filoutjie

Ek wil ook gou 'n eiertjie le.(can't find accents). When I listen to The Dutch radio programme here, I can understand most of what is said, unless someone speaks with a very heavy Dutch accent. When I speak "Dutch", I dutchify my Afrikaans accent and try not to say "baie". At school we had Dutch prescribed books and found them easy to read. As for grammar, I have no knowledge of Dutch grammar (when do you say "het" and when do you say "de"?) but I can still understand what is being said.
Regarding the development of Afrikaans, my mum told us they were punished at school in the 1920s for speaking Afrikaans, as it was considered a "kombuistaal" (kitchen language).


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## Trader26

Hello Filoutjie,

I'm also a South African expat living in the UK.  I think for some Afrikaans expats "Dutch" becomes a comfort language if you know what I mean... 

I speak english, work in english, read english, listen to english but sometimes I like to read a Dutch newspaper or listen to the news in Dutch online. This gives me the greatest pleasure listening to Dutch especially Flemish because I reconise the roots of my language, and it's comforting. 


To Joannes and An2net..... I understand both your points. Afrikaans is so much simpler, phonetically spelled, and flexible to accommodate "leenwoorde" from African languages. It makes it a truely South African language. .


But  on the other hand the fact still remains that Afrikaans originate from Dutch. If you walk around "Kaapstad"  you will still see Dutch street names. Most buildings built before 1925 still have Dutch writing engraved on them. If you want to understand books written before the 1920s you will need to have some knowledge of Dutch. It's part of our history and you can't change that.

** Also take note ... when they voted for or against the usage of written Dutch as a language in the 1920s ... only 54% of Afrikaaners at that time voted for the usage of Afrikaans meaning the other 46% did not wanted to give up Dutch as a written language.


That is why I agree with what Petus Van Eeden wrote.  

Please take note I'm quoting the words of Petrus Van Eeden taken from the Newspaper "Die Burger 1993".


"Ek woon al twee jaar in Vlaandere en ek vra myself elke dag af waarom Afrikaans en Nederlands twee tale moet wees.  Waarom kan ons nie op taalkundige gebied 'n eenheid vorm soos al die ander lande van die nuwe wêreld dit met hul stamlande doen nie?  Die taalproblematiek aan die Kaap was nie meer of minder uniek as in enige ander land in die nuwe wêreld nie. (...)"

*Moderator note: please respect copyright restrictions - do not quote more than 4 lines.
As Frank already had stated above in post 10 of this thread.
Thank you!
sokol
Moderator EHL*


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## an2net

> Dutch was never _re_-imported in Flanders. There was the emergence of a standard language, which was the same as the one that had more or less been established in the North. And though it is true that this standard language probably helped to give Dutch more recognition in Belgium, the prestige of Dutch rather grew together with the economic status of its speakers, as so often is the case and as had been the reason why important decisions in Belgium were taken in French until mid 20th century.
> 
> People would in part lose their affinity with Afrikaans, which is probably more important for the survival of Afrikaans than a strong linguistic institution would be. You shouldn't forget the large number of second language speakers of Afrikaans - they don't feel anything about Dutch.
> 
> Don't get me wrong: I think it's a shame that there barely is any cultural exchange between Afrikaans and Dutch speaking communities (The same goes for the Dutch speaking communities of Suriname and the Antilles, for that matter).



Thank you filoutjie for your support! I believe the change from Dutch to Afrikaans in South-Africa actually opened doors for Afrikanes who then no longer spoke a "kombuistaal". They could negotiate better to improve the political situation from a colony to a Republic.

There remain a problem with people in South Africa who essentially had no contact with English until the 1980's. If we are unable to negotiate a place for them in the new political dispensation, we frankly do not feel enough for our language or our fellow Afrikaans speakers. It is time to wake up and use these facts to help our brothers, or are illiterate speaker doomed to learn a language their parents know nothing about. Why is it considered for hearing children of deaf parents to have much contact with other hearing people? Because without speaking language they will be considered dumb, like their parents! Afrikaans children will also be dumb until they learn Dutch.

I also _read_ Dutch, but that is very different from _writing_ Dutch which I certainly cannot. And although I am a little hard of hearing nobody is going to call ME dumb!! The ability to communicate remains a very fundamental part of being able to associate yourself with others in the group. In South Africa Afrikaans as an official language will definitely contribute to include large numbers of currently excluded people. Dutch will have no such influence, but will do the opposite. If you cannot write, at least you should be able to speak. You will be amazed how many older people who cannot speak English, can still speak a little Afrikaans. The trick is not to ask them if they "know" or "speak" it, but simply to establish whether they "hear" it. This frequent reaction is more than enough to make us proud of our language. I wish everybody will just BE proud!


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## Trader26

an2net said:


> Thank you filoutjie for your support! I believe the change from Dutch to Afrikaans in South-Africa actually opened doors for Afrikanes who then no longer spoke a "kombuistaal". They could negotiate better to improve the political situation from a colony to a Republic.
> 
> I wish everybody will just BE proud!


 
I had a long think about whether changing Afrikaans back to Dutch would be good for South Africa and I would now like to change my opinion and agree with An2net and the rest that Afrikaans should stay.

1) Afrikaans is a language spoken by 6 million mother tongue speakers and about about 15 million as a second language, the chance of the language dying out is very unlikely.

2) The majority of the Afrikaans speakers as a second language and first language have no affinity towards the Netherlands. 

3) If you look at the Afrikaans culture you will find our culture is definitely more English than Dutch. We love our rugby (we are currently the world champions in rugby) an English sport, cricket is our second favourite sport also an English sport, we still drive on the left hand side like the UK, we love our full English breakfast wereas I believe in the Netherlands they eat bread with chocolate for breakfast.

And lastly we are still part of the British Commonwealth. Britain is still our biggest trade partner and we probably feel and act more British than Dutch.

4) The majority of Afrikaans speakers would therefor rather speak English than convert back to learning Dutch. 

A recent study in "The Times" Newspaper in South Africa also found that more and more black children are choosing Afrikaans as a second languge above their own native language. That just proves to me that Afrikaans has a bright future ahead and by changing back to Dutch wll probably do more harm than good.

Thank You


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## Lugubert

A professional translator from Dutch into Swedish, I think that I would have few problems if in SA using my not too fluent oral standard Dutch and understanding their spoken Afrikaans.


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## Brussels slumdog

Trader26 said:


> I had a long think about whether changing Afrikaans back to Dutch would be good for South Africa and I would now like to change my opinion and agree with An2net and the rest that Afrikaans should stay.


 
I am an English speaking South African and I believe that Afrikaans should
stay.
Speaking afrikaans has prevented 3 million people from being called " *
"Dutch colonialists*".
The Afrikaners do not have a colonial Master as there are Afrikaans speaking countries in Europe.


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## an2net

Kevin Beach said:


> Maybe the difference is because English is so widely spread around the world, whereas Dutch is basically limited to South Africa except in its home territories.
> Until a time still within living memory, there were constant contacts between all non-American Anglophone parts of the world through the Empire administration.


_
Sorry for replying a post earlier than elsewhere I wrote in this thread!_

My reason is because I think in our philosophising we have dislocated the language from the people's social situations.

I am from German origin, my forefather was working for the VOC and came to the Cape in the 1660's. My ex is also German and his mother is very interested in the European history of that time. Most Afrikaners do not realise that the Europeans of that time drifted towards the Netherlands because of religious reasons. It was just after the 100-year war and emotions as well as day-to-day struggles was formed by the situations created by the war. The Calivinistic Germans, French, Flemish and others were drawn to the VOC, shipbuilders in the Netherlands, and East-Indian traders because they could associate religiously with those people. The German immigrants mainly came from Saxony. The dialect spoken by those people is a flat German, and could probably be well-understood by the Dutch in the trade industries, which was also a flat Dutch (compare "Plattditch" in German).

The langage of the Cape Dutch was very much influenced by Malaisian and Arabic, as is still reflected in Afrikaans today. The Cape Dutch were plagued by attacks from the Ngunis and the "Bushmen", and thus there were minimal influence from those languages. Indigenous mixing with the "Hottentot"-languages were localised to the regions from where they came until these people spread towards the cities. The San-people can be differentiated clearly into two main groups, one with clear indigenous features and another with "East-Indian" slave origins. Their grouping together into a "Coloured" group in the later 1900's made the differences vague for most Afrikaners. I think it is still very clearly reflected in our language and its dialects. Unfortunately these distinctions were branded as racist and still receive very little recognition in our language training as a result. I hope I will be forgiven for using a few very sensitive terms in this regard in order to clarify some things in my beautiful language and culture. 

Afrikaans remained seperated from English largely because of the relatively large population that spoke it. Many of the English Settlers that farmed intermarried with Afrikaners and are now integrated into our culture. Afrikaans and its forerunners was a very widespread language compared to the little groups created by the British Settlers.

The English speakers that did not integrate into the local Afrikaans were concentrated in some SA cities, especially around the gold and diamond mines, and then also at the administrative centres. In the less populated centre of SA, you will be well-prepared to speak Afrikaans rather than English, even today. If it were not for the spread of radio, TV and computers since especially the 1960's, most of these people would still not be able to help you in English.  In some regions English is a new phenomenon of the 1970's and 1980's, and the older people are currently isolated because they are not allowed to communicate officially in a language they know. This is one of the motivations that much of the current move to get Afrikaans re-recognised as an official language use. Although often said to be very racist, most of these people are actually against such sensitivities because it removes their cultural heritage and indigenous bonds.

I ask your pardon if any of this writing came over as racist: it is definitely not my intention to discriminate against groups of people. It is rather an effort to explain the fine lines that characterise our culture and language in a comprehensible manner. Apartheid generally had a larger intention of retaining cultural heritages than what we nowadays appreciate. A lot is now difficult because it horribly failed its more noble causes.

I hope this clarifies the questions asked about the differences in English and Afrikaans and what appears to be the case today. There are much more I can say about early Cape Dutch from names, misspellings, changes and the like, but I prefer to elaborate on such things only if there is a very clear interest from others to do so in this threat.


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## Brioche

Trader26 said:


> 3) If you look at the Afrikaans culture you will find our culture is definitely more English than Dutch. We love our rugby (we are currently the world champions in rugby) an English sport, cricket is our second favourite sport also an English sport, we still drive on the left hand side like the UK, we love our full English breakfast wereas I believe in the Netherlands they eat bread with chocolate for breakfast.
> 
> Thank You



At the time South Africa was colonised by the Dutch, the Dutch drove on the left. That's why Indonesia drives on the left - Dutch colonial heritage.

Revolutionary France introduced driving on the right, and Napoleon was responsible for Holland changing sides - and the other countries which he occupied. Napoleon did not make it to the Dutch East Indies, so they did  not change.

When Hitler took over Austria in 1938, the Austrians [except in Tyrol which had been occupied by Napoleon] still drove on the left.


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