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Usefulness of Afrikaans? | ||
Tags: Afrikaans | Usefulness | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| Kc2012 Diglot Groupie South Africa Joined 4270 days ago 44 posts - 65 votes  Speaks: English*, Afrikaans Studies: Dutch, Mandarin, Russian | Message 9 of 18 02 June 2015 at 7:30am | IP Logged | ||
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So as a South African and one who speaks Afrikaans I feel most qualified to answer
this question :P!! So first of all, Afrikaans is not so useful outside of South Africa. Those who live abroad may feel even in South Africa it's not too useful seeing as most speak English, this would be wrong. Afrikaans is the most widely spoken language in terms of racial diversity in South Africa. In other words, white people, black people, people of mixed races, Indians, Malays all speak Afrikaans. This cannot be said for any of the other official languages in South Africa. In South Africa when entering into a profession where communication is key and one where you will be dealing with many kinds of people (doctor for example) Afrikaans is key and thus is a requirement to pass in some uni degree programs, on top of everyone learning it throughout their schooling. When people ask me 'who actually speaks Afrikaans?' I like to say everybody in South Africa speaks at least basic Afrikaans. As for general worldly usefulness.. Unless you're planning to do business in South Africa It is very low. You could argue it's a gateway language, opening doors to other Germanic languages, but if you speak Dutch you've already opened this door. Don't study it for it's usefulness, if you're interested in it give it a go, it's a fun language and there are plenty of novels and good poetry in Afrikaans. With SA's history and all, there are some very interesting things literary works out there. 13 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Suidpunt Newbie South Africa Joined 3196 days ago 1 posts - 10 votes Speaks: Afrikaans* | Message 10 of 18 07 August 2015 at 10:00pm | IP Logged | ||
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I agree with Kc2012. (Hope I'm not too late! And pardon my poor English.)
And as for one studying his M.A. in Afrikaans Literature, and a very active contributor at the Afrikaans Wikipedia, I have only a few points to add, which you might consider. * Afrikaans is a lot more euphonic than Dutch, yes, but so is Argentinian Spanish compared to the prim and proper "European Spanish". In the end, you still speak Spanish. * The past few days, I have checked out Interpals.net, and the outcome of the site shocked me. It is clear that the biggest fans of Afrikaans are the Dutch and Americans (by far!), a few Germans, French and younger Russians. And the number of Moroccans was quite a surprise! Afrikaans is just a curiosity. Yet, Afrikaans is still better off than the Breton language. The users from the African continent are blocked from interacting with many European users. And if you do succeed in sending a message - the Europeans almost never reply back, even when online and listing Afrikaans as one of their "learning languages". Furthermore: the Afrikaans speaker has a limited number of foreign language native speakers to talk to who is indeed interested in Afrikaans. There are more Afrikaans people interested in say, French and German, than French and German speakers interested in Afrikaans. This is, obviously, counterproductive and discourages Afrikaans users from signing up. And Dutch, well... I have three "Van Dale" dictionaries in my bookshelf to help myself with. Dutch is normally considered mostly as a bone dry language meant only for academic purposes. That is because the modern Afrikaans speaker has never been exposed to the fun and friendly side of Dutch (such as cartoons and comic books in the original Dutch language itself), only the sober, academic, and matter-of-fact ("nugter") side on paper. "Knowing" Dutch (if only for reading purposes) for an Afrikaans speaker is like bragging "I can speak English!". It's just a given. The Dutch, on the other hand, sees Afrikaans as a "grappig" (funny, but also fun and vivacious) language. We are amused by "false friends" such as 'paardenfokker' - 'horse breeder' in Dutch, 'horse f*cker' in Afrikaans. (Sorry for the vulgarity, but you do catch my drift). And no, since the 1980s (due to the academic sanctions) no Dutch book has ever been prescribed in public schools. Only at universities, where it receives marginal attention from Afrikaans students. * There are a lot of "insider jokes" and unknown expressions, that not even the Dutch would grasp. Then again, how much contact do the Afrikaans speakers have with the Dutch? Other than channel BVN on premium satellite television? Perhaps the Dutch Wikipedia? (But statistics from Wikipedia shows the Afrikaans Wikipedia is still the second largest visited language (1,2%) in South Africa, next to English (73%+) and Portal (21,1%)...) The remaining Dutch books has been removed from the provincial libraries. And then - what about those dialects (or remnants) in Suriname and Indonesia? Do we really care about them? Do the Dutch really care about them? * In 1995 Petrus van Eeden published a "lisensiaatverhandeling" (dissertation) in Belgium, titled: "Afrikaans hoort by Nederlands". [Afrikaans should stick with Dutch]. As was the case with the Canadian French that finally realized that Parisian French was their only choice of cultural survival in the Anglosphere, and that not even the Americans have split from British "English", or the Portuguese across Brazil and Portugal, Van Eeden shows how much money is wasted each year on institutions trying to keep Afrikaans alive. The South African Government doesn't care about Afrikaans - there are other more important expenditures to take care of the "welfare state". Money are begged from the private sector, the Afrikaans speaker and the Dutch institutions. I recommend any person with Dutch knowledge to read it: http://www.afrikaans.nu/afrikaans_hoort_by_nederlands.pdf . If you know Dutch, your Afrikaans would do just fine. After I read the dissertation in December 2014 for the first time, I was livid at myself for trying to keep a dialect alive! My language is nothing more than a lie. But, I'm already enrolled for my Master's Degree for a year now, so what can one do? The Dutch dictionary would have been so happy to include Afrikaans phrases, like in fact it did until the 1960s. In my opinion, Afrikaans only enriched a few people in South Africa: the monopoly -> the publishers -> (the evil!) Naspers - which controls every form of South African media (even our satellite television, DStv and Multichoice) and the biggest South African online shops. Which is why I urge Afrikaans writers to boycott this beast and start selfpublishing. Afrikaans speakers are not keen readers or buyers; despite all the books gathering dust on the shelves in the libraries. More books of "Agaat" (Marlene van Niekerk) has been sold in 2 years' time in Sweden (30 000 books) than in South Africa in a period over 10 years (14 000). Worst: most of the Afrikaans speakers are scared to death for any language other than Afrikaans or English. Recently Van Eeden pointed out that Afrikaners in Holland (residing there for 5 tot 10 years already!), surrounded by Dutch literature, only speak in English to the Dutch and still prefer reading English books. In the centre of a language Mecca of Dutch literature! Even the Afrikaans tourist guides in South Africa never speak in Afrikaans towards Dutch tourists. Only in English. If the tourists are firm enough what language they want, it might prove otherwise. * In reply, Prof. J.C. Steyn said that Dutch could never have withstand English in South Africa if the language has not simplified its own grammar. That is evolution. Even the French-Dutch relations in Belgium is, grammatically speaking, fair. But in South Africa, not even the almighty German, with all its grandeur Kultur, could have withstand the easy-peasy-English-grammar pressure - basically all of the Colonial Germans in the Cape (Eastern Border) has exchanged their mother tongue for English. The Natal Germans followed suit. What would the outcomes be to Canadian French? The assimilated American Germans and American Dutch are certainly the best example by far, in parallel terms. Then: One problem with Afrikaans simply being a dialect of Dutch: in the end, dialects die out as the "Standard Language" gradually takes over. But who will die out first? Afrikaans or Limburgs? * According to an article in "Taalgenoot", Deon Meyer and Marlene van Niekerk are quite popular in Europe, but then... the books are already translated! Would you really care to read Jo Nesbø's books in Norwegian, if it is already available in French? Of course not! The only exception might be those translators who want to stay true to the original text - the rest only translate the book from the English translation. Because of the latter, you get quite comical results: In one of Breyten Breytenbach's poems, "Ou gabba" was correctly translated to street English "china" (that is, "my China" - my friend), but was literally translated to French as "porcelaine". Languages which directly translates from Afrikaans: German, Norwegian, English and Dutch. No other. Fiction translated from Afrikaans hardly sells in South Africa, but abroad, it does. Naspers admitted in the same "Taalgenoot"-article that they almost NEVER translate Afrikaans non-fiction books. This is signing the death warrant for Afrikaans - the only real value of a language is seen in its scientific works. See German and Dutch, for example. Some of the most high quality scientific works in Afrikaans has never been translated and will never be read - for it rots in the university libraries or is inaccessible thanks to Sabinet. The Afrikaans speakers are forced to publish their books in English to get international attention. A big language can handle it, a small one can't. The "publish or perish" at academic institutions doesn't help small languages either: instead of concentrating on delivering "thick" and "bold" works, the academics doesn't have much of a choice than constantly publishing flea-sized peer reviewed articles (once again, blocked by Sabinet to the general public). 20 years ago, the quality of a book was considered more valuable than trying to build a CV listing 900 published articles. The only solution: I turn to the Afrikaans Wikipedia and contribute there. * Afrikaans is what we call a "braakland" (fallow land/land ploughed for the first time). The number of experimented Afrikaans - foreign language dictionaries came to an abrupt end when the Japanese asked one of our multilingual professors for help. A small Japanese dictionary has been published. That was back in 2001. Hello, welcome to 2015. I've made a list at the Afrikaans Wikipedia of all the foreign dictionaries I could find: https://af.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lys_van_gedrukte_Afrikaans-vre emdtalige_woordeboeke . So, if you do want to be treated like a god by the Afrikaans Taalkommissie, get to know Afrikaans, write a dictionary (our small French-Afrikaans/Afrikaans-French dictionary is like 65 years old and no reprint or editing has EVER been made - that is why I use a Dutch Prisma Edition I bought from a charity shop). The following circular reasoning is usually argumented by the South African (Afrikaans) critics : An Afrikaans speaker cannot write a foreign Afrikaans dictionary, for there are no one at the South African academic institutions that can check whether the work done is correct. So, I'll then have to assume somewhere at the University of Ethiopia there would be someone given by the gods that knows both Afrikaans and Amharic at native level?! * There are almost no "rou" (raw, untranslated) Afrikaans literature as readily available on Amazon.de as in South Africa. Not even German-Afrikaans dictionaries (which we do have in stock in South Africa, albeit very outdated reprints). This means that you actually have to fly to South Africa to get the books you need. And vica versa. In the 1950s one could've bought a German, French or Dutch book at any South African bookstore you like - not anymore! The books are too expensive, outpriced and --- who reads German, French and Dutch nowadays in South Africa? If it wasn't for the carefree German tourists and newly established immigrants, I would never have gotten German books almost for free. Book trades between these countries are poor, to say the least. The average South African doesn't even know about the famous German science-fiction writer, Andreas Eschbach. I didn't even knew about the German Stefanie Gercke who wrote her books at her holiday home at Umhlanga Rocks. How many Afrikaans people knew about the Dutch poet and critic Gerrit Komrij? Sure, numerous French websites are out there - and there are always a Belgian website to help you learn French. But what about the French trying to learn Afrikaans? * Every time I read a German fictional book about South Africa, I became bored after a while (and sometimes burst out in laughter) at the typical German ignorance and amateur writing skills - as clearly seen by the numerous Afrikaans spelling mistakes, and typical "Help me, I'm lost in Africa"-tips as quoted from a tour guide. And, whereas the far right Nazi-Germans used to make the Jews the scapegoat in their literature, the modern liberal Germans nowadays has found a new shadow figure and caricature: the Afrikaner (characterized by media perceptions from the 1980s, not the modern day Ersatz-folk I know). Why not just learn Afrikaans, get to know the locals and your Garmin properly, and write a proper book for a change? Afrikaans is, after all, one of the easiest Germanic languages on the planet, you know... [Better still: keep your German suspense setting in the well-known backstreets of cosmo-Berlin!]. * Last but not least - average and lazy students copy and paste bits and pieces from bias English books for their dissertations. True students do it Dutch-style : they discard the English books from the table as rubbish, break out the power tools and start their own research at grassroot level. If I want to do research about say, Denmark, I don't just copy what I read in the archives of American magazines and CNN or Fox News (hell, no!). If you want to distinguish yourself from your peers, you teach yourself Danish, ask questions (don't merely accept the facts professors gave you - it is usually bias; academics are seldom "neutral"), avoid Hineininterpretierung (and see the era an event took place as is, without conveniently using the modern Zeitgeist as a tool to score marks), jump into the Danish archives (online or institutions), and move on. * If Dutch remained the official language in South Africa - the Western Cape would perhaps have been a lot more empty (or more English)... and Amsterdam a lot more crowded in 2015. So, what concerns the usefulness of the Afrikaans language - I leave that over to you. On the one hand, there is a lot of potential in translation and lexicography, on the other hand, you are sitting with a community that has not realized their language's full potential yet and expect a 'deus ex machina' and miracles coming from "abroad". 10 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| aokoye Diglot Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5338 days ago 235 posts - 453 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Dutch, Norwegian, Japanese | Message 11 of 18 12 August 2015 at 12:47am | IP Logged | ||
Would it be false to assume that a big part of this is because of the Afrikaans Medium Decree that was enacted 1974? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6500 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 12 of 18 12 August 2015 at 5:58pm | IP Logged | ||
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I have studied enough Afrikaans to be able to read it fairly well, and I understand it well enough to understand a series like "Die Taal wat ons praat". The problem for me has always been to find materials because most sources on the internet are mixed up with English, and with English being a world language and Afrikaans being limited to the Southern tip of Africa that means that English will keep pushing Afrikaans out.
Let me add that even here in Denmark English is pushing out own language out, because it is ubiquitous in the media and in the brains of a number of influentual persons who don't care about Danish or who believe that nothing can ever threaten its position. So we don't have to go to South Africa to see this effect. But it was a problem to find relevant non fiction even in those South African bookstores I visited during my last visit down there. And getting to speak it was even more difficult because everybody speaks to you in English. As for keeping Dutch .. well, that would be silly. Afrikaans is NOT Dutch. It has its own grammar, its own spelling, a fair number of words that don't exist in Dutch and not least, its own territory far from the Low countries. Trying to pretend that a liaison with the Netherlands could keep Afrikaans afloat would be doomed because the reality doesn't correspond to that picture. The thing that is needed is that those who use it establish some firm boundaries to mark the limit between English and Afrikaans so that you always know what you can expect from a magazine or newspaper of homepage. If the two are mixed due to some sloppy laissez-faire mentality the English part will end up pushing the Afrikaans part of the content out. Edited by Iversen on 13 August 2015 at 2:39am 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| ScottScheule Diglot Senior Member United States scheule.blogspot.com Joined 5025 days ago 645 posts - 1176 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Latin, Hungarian, Biblical Hebrew, Old English, Russian, Swedish, German, Italian, French | Message 13 of 18 12 August 2015 at 10:32pm | IP Logged | ||
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In most situations, learning any language besides your native one and whatever the current lingua franca is is pointless (except Latin--Latin chicks are really hot). Now the niceties of your situation may change that--if you expect to be banished to the Brazilian rainforest sometime soon, brush up on your Piraha! If you want to study Classical Music, best to learn Italian, German and maybe Russian depending on whether or not you like Shostakovich, which you shouldn't.
But, lacking those kind of situations, this is all useless (like most things). So learn whatever gives you pleasure. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| aokoye Diglot Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5338 days ago 235 posts - 453 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Dutch, Norwegian, Japanese | Message 14 of 18 13 August 2015 at 4:46am | IP Logged | ||
Lies, everyone should like Shostakovich! Ok, people can like who they like and not like who they don't but Shostakovich was an amazing composer, as were a number of the other Russians. 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| aokoye Diglot Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5338 days ago 235 posts - 453 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Dutch, Norwegian, Japanese | Message 15 of 18 13 August 2015 at 5:51am | IP Logged | ||
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When it comes right down to it I don't feel particularly bad about Afrikaans' importance being
diminished because of English. In a lot of ways I see it as a, "well this is a very diluted taste of your own medicine given that it was used in an attempt to systematically wipe out other languages and cultures. It kind of sucks that English is the language that is the language doing the dominating at the moment because people have used English in the exact same way, but I don't feel bad about the demise of Afrikaans in the way same way I feel bad about the demise of other languages. Perhaps I'd feel a bit different if my first language, English, was the one being diminished, but even then, I don't think I would feel particularly bad given the history English has had with people using it to systematically extinguish languages and cultures. Yes it sucks, but to me it pales in comparison to what has happened and is happening with most other languages spoken in South Africa. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| ScottScheule Diglot Senior Member United States scheule.blogspot.com Joined 5025 days ago 645 posts - 1176 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Latin, Hungarian, Biblical Hebrew, Old English, Russian, Swedish, German, Italian, French | Message 16 of 18 13 August 2015 at 3:51pm | IP Logged | ||
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Joking! Shostakovich's not bad at all. Stravinsky and Tchaikovsky are still my faves, but there's room for other Russians in there.
I don't attach moral significance to what language people speak. If a group of people decide, hey, the language we're speaking isn't that useful, and we'd do better if we adopted a more widely spoken language, so let's teach our children that language--that's all fine with me. I might be a bit sad inside if it's a language that I liked that they're giving up, but I wouldn't dream of telling people they should consider that when they decide what language they wish to speak. Now sometimes languages are purposefully diminished, like under Francoist Spain, even though people wish to continue to speak them. That's objectionable, but not, I 'd say, because of the result, but because of the means. If the Basques had voluntarily moved away from Basque, that's fine--if they were forced to, as they were, then that's problematic, even though both situations may well lead to the same result. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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