Purity of language falls by the wayside

Yes, I know, it is rather ironic that this article is written in English when dealing with the subject of Afrikaans, but it is done for a reason – so that everyone, no matter their mother tongue, can take note of this sad tendency to forsake purity for popularity.

After all, the butchering of languages is a daily occurrence across the world, yet a language is intricately connected to culture and tradition. Therefore, dismantle a language and you begin to mercilessly pull at the thread of a culture.

It has been a while now that I cringe at the way people use Afrikaans as a language, and then I am primarily talking about your true blood Afrikaner.

I make mention of this sore point since the Afrikaans culture has been in the spotlight for a while in South Africa, with the battle to ”save” the language and the Afrikaner traditions waging unabated.

Artists like Steve Hofmeyr, who is now caught up in a race row, have been in the forefront of promoting the Afrikaans culture.

His actions have, however, been frowned upon by many, as he has stood his ground by, for example, singing Die Stem at concerts.

Many of course regard Die Stem as the anthem of Apartheid, but this author has previously written that the roots of Die Stem have everything to do with the Afrikaner culture and nothing with racism.

The Hofmeyr debacle is, however, just another example of how easily a culture of certain traditions can be misconstrued and incorrectly labelled.

But, let us leave this debate and rather focus on the attack on the purity of language.

Daily you watch on TV how the purity of Afrikaans, as spoken in Afrikaans programmes, be they actuality (even the news) or shows of entertainment quality, is tragically ill-treated, disrespected and disregarded.

I am sure there are many Afrikaners who are aware of this ”crime”, that goes unpunished, but somewhere along the line something has to be done, especially if one is serious about saving the Afrikaner culture.

I will never claim that I am an expert in linguistics, but I remain of the Afrikaner stable, even though, for most of my childhood, I grew up in Europe.

I have to wonder why, however, if this bothers me, someone who attended an Afrikaans school for only three years or so, this matter is not being addressed more vigorously throughout the Afrikaner community?

Any language evolves – take English, for example.

Modern-day English does not represent the days of Shakespeare, but there is a difference between evolving and simply forsaking purity because of a lack of knowledge, ignorance, or even laziness.

And, when we talk about purity, we talk about the Afrikaner language, which is an offshoot of several Dutch dialects spoken by the mainly Dutch settlers, where it gradually began to develop independently in the course of the 18th century.

Hence, historically, Afrikaans is a daughter language of Dutch, and was previously referred to as “Cape Dutch” (a term also used to refer collectively to the early Cape settlers) or “kitchen Dutch” (a derogatory term used to refer to Afrikaans in its earlier days).

Although Afrikaans has adopted words from other languages, including Portuguese, the Bantu languages, Malay and the Khoisan languages, an estimated 90 to 95 per cent of the pure Afrikaans vocabulary is of Dutch origin. Dutch, of course, falls under the Germanic languages.

And then you get the more impure version, where a lot of words used in Afrikaans have been influenced by the Romance languages, which started from Vulgar Latin. The biggest Romance languages are Spanish, Portuguese, French, Italian and Romanian.

We often think these words are is a form of Anglicism (when it seems they are directly translated from English – also a Germanic language), which is not always true. Interestingly, a significant portion of the English vocabulary has come from Romance and Latinate sources.

What we are dealing here with is the purity of the Afrikaans language, therefore the Dutch origin, which have been systematically been influenced by, for example, the Romance languages.

Even though the more “impure” version is favoured these days above the original Dutch version, it is not wrong in itself, but still remains a concern, as one wonders how long the purer version will last.

Here is a good example of the two versions (first mentioned is the English word followed by the “impure” version and then the pure version): occasion (okkasie, instead of beroep), location (lokasie instead of plek), occupation – in terms of invasion (okkupasie instead of besetting), formidable (formidabel instead of gedug), catastrophe (katastrofe instead of ramp), spare wheel (spaarwiel instead of noodwiel), conclusion (konklusie instread of gevolgtrekking), incident (insident instead of voorval), inspiration (inspirasie instead of besieling), option (opsie instead of keuse), vitality (vitaliteit instead of lewenskrag), instruction (instruksie instead of opdrag), friction (friksie instead of wrywing), mystery (misterieus instead of geheimsinig) or philosophical (filosofies instead of wysgerig).

In Afrikaans we would, for example, incorrectly tend to say “hy doen vir my ‘n guns” instead of “hy bewys my ‘n guns”, or “daar sal niks verkeerd gaan nie” instead of “daar sal niks verkeerd loop nie”, or “hier het jy die harde feite” instead of “hier het jy die nugtere feite”, or “jy is in vir moeilikheid” instead of “vandag ry jy aan die pen”, or “hy maak sy merk in die lewe” instead of “hy onderskei hom in die lewe”.

Then we just get sloppy when we use words like robot instead of verkeerslig, or we use terms like loods (as when you launch a project) instead van stapel te stuur.

Yes, the list of “impure” words, phrases and idioms is endless.

The crux of the matter is that we have lost the art of speaking pure Afrikaans.

Take, for example, the following well accepted words in Afrikaans: biblioteek, akrobaat, makaroni, depressie, krematorium en politiek. In pure Afrikaans these are translated as boekery, koorddanser, deegdrade, handelslapte, lykoond en staatkunde.

And if this “impurity” of the language has become the acceptable norm, what then does this say about the life expectancy of the purity of the Afrikaans culture?