Preface
The last time a monograph devoted entirely to the question of anglicisms in Afrikaans appeared was in 1937. (cf. Rousseau 1937) Since then a great deal has changed. The Afrikaner has become much more bilingual than he was in those days and he has lost even the passive knowledge of Dutch that was prevalent back in the thirties, so soon after Afrikaans replaced Dutch as the other official language of South Africa. Most Afrikaners are now even less a product of the platteland than they were earlier this century; there is no longer a geographic and cultural gap between them and their English speaking compatriots. These new circumstances have led to a degree of English influence on Afrikaans that is without compare in the world of European languages. And yet the world is largely ignorant of this unique linguistic situation. It is my hope that this book will be read both inside and outside South Africa: in the former case I hope it may serve as a useful update on what is occurring in the language as a result of the intimate contact with English and one day serve as a record of the situation as it was in the 1980's (as Rousseau's book has recorded for posterity the situation prevailing in the 1930's); and in the latter case I hope that those involved in research on bilingualism will now take cognisance of the relevance of the South African situation to their field of science and not pretend it doesn't exist just because they find the politics of the country concerned distasteful.
Throughout this book I have employed, in line with common practice, the Harvard method when referring to other sources. Full details of the works cited can be found in the bibliography at the back.
Although the word Diets is no longer current in Holland because of the negative connotations it acquired during World War II, it is still frequently used in South Africa where these connotations do not exist and where it occurs as an indispensable collective term for Dutch, Frisian and Afrikaans. As English does not have such a term, I have taken the liberty of using it indiscriminately with this meaning as if it were English.
Many of the examples given in the corpus in chapter seven appear in lists. It was not always practical for the notes to which the numbers in those lists refer, to be placed at the foot of the pages concerned; in such cases the notes will be found at the end of the lists, sometimes several pages further on. Where it was technically feasible for the numbers to refer to conventional footnotes, these will be found on the page in question.
To avoid confusion arising in situations where (cf. p. 50), for example, may refer either to a work under discussion at that point or to a page of this
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