The Influence of English on Afrikaans

1.4 The methodology

1.4.1 Sources of the corpus

From 1974-84 the South African embassy in Canberra regularly kept me supplied with copies of Die Burger, the leading Capetonian Afrikaans daily, and Suid-Afrikaanse Panorama, a glossy magazine on various facets of South African life that appears separately in both official languages. These publications were the first and only source of material at my disposal while resident in Australia. I spent the period February to October 1983 in Bloemfontein where I greatly expanded my corpus by reading the Afrikaans press extensively, as well as gleaning a considerable amount of material from the radio and television broadcasts of the SABC. I chose to do the research for this book in Bloemfontein as it is the only substantial urban environment in South Africa that is predominantly and over-whelmingly Afrikaans, and is simultaneously the site of a university. Not being a native-speaker of Afrikaans and thus unable to apply my own taalgevoel to what I heard and read, and as my interest was in ingeburgerde Anglisismes rather than interference phenomena, I considered it necessary to immerse myself in the ‘purest’ environment available, which Johannesburg, Cape Town or Pretoria would certainly not have been. Even in Bloemfontein, a bastion of Afrikanerdom where very little

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English is used, I was continuously confronted with examples of deep-rooted English influence. This seemed more significant to me in such an environment than if I had been confronted with similar circumstances in the other cities of South Africa where one is continually employing one's bilingualism and is thus more susceptible to inference. Coetzee (1948: 21) remarked after discussing examples of English influence:

‘So 'n voorbeeld dien om ons daarop bedag te maak dat vanuit die hoek van die Engelssprekende heelwat invloed op Afrikaans uitgeoefen sal word, afgesien nog van die Anglisismes wat Engelskundige Afrikaanssprekendes self invoer.’

After what I was confronted with in Bloemfontein, I would question whether Afrikaners need any help from English speakers in absorbing English influence; I doubt in fact whether the latter have had any significant role to play in so many anglicisms having been assimilated into Afrikaans.

I have not limited myself to collecting examples from the written language, despite attitudes such as the following:

‘Die belangrike rol wat die skryftaal by standaardisasie speel, kan ook nie onderskat word nie. Van Wyk (1978) wys, met verwysing na Steyn (1976) se weergawe van 'n paar sintaktiese onvastighede in Afrikaans, daarop dat (soos Labov reeds bewys het) 'n vorm nog nie goeie Afrikaans is as hy nog nie in die skryftaal aanvaar is nie.’ (Coetzee 1982: 276)

To gain acceptance in the written language, the phenomena must begin somewhere, clearly in the spoken language, even if to begin with one would simply class them as examples of interference.² Eventually they can occur with great frequency and yet still not always be particularly evident in writing:

‘Dit is deur middel van die gesproke taal dat taal gevorm word en waar dit groei - óf sal sommiges beweer, waar dit ten gronde gaan - en sekerlik verander.’ (Hauptfleisch 1983: 63)

Besides, what constitutes the standard language (cf. 4.00) and what is skryftaal, as, for example, the many omissions from HAT of common everyday expressions (which I have often seen in writing too) prove?

2 Pienaar (1931: 175) refers to papier-Anglisismes, a small category of anglicisms which occur only in writing, not in speech, for example: wie instead of wat as a relative pronoun with reference to personal antecedents.

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I have not felt obliged to give specific references to the sources of my corpus. Firstly, it would have been unwieldy to do so given the size of the corpus, and in the case of those I have collected from personal conversations and the electronic media, it would have been impossible. Secondly, and more importantly however, if a concrete (written) reference is required to substantiate the existence of a word or structure to prove its existence, it is apparently unusual or uncommon and thus is not relevant enough for inclusion in this study. The stance I have taken here is supported by De Bruto (1970: 38), where he points out that one must be sure one is not just dealing with an individual's taalgebruik but that what one has observed and recorded is evidence of sisteemverdringing. My approach here is also identical to that taken by Le Roux (1968: 165):

‘Gedurende geruime tyd het ek voorbeelde opgeteken uit die mond van beskaafde en ontwikkelde Afrikaners, en veral uit koerante, tydskrifte en die werke van bekende skrywers. Bronne vermeld ek nie: die ruimte laat dit nie toe nie en dit kan aanleiding gee tot onnodige kleinserigheid aan die kant van die skrywer en ongeregverdigde gevolgtrekkinge aan die kant van die leser.’

1.4.2 Identifying English influence

A bilingual situation such as exists in South Africa must give rise to linguistic interference. The question hardly needs to be posed whether interference, and as a consequence thereof influence, has occurred. Rather one needs to take cognisance of the fact that it has taken place, and will continue to. Then one should trace these influences, and, having identified them, one should attempt to classify them and describe what has occurred. That is to be the task of this work, as well as looking at the theoretical explanations of linguistic change with regard to this particular language contact situation.

The difficulties one has to contend with in conclusively identifying phenomena in Afrikaans as English inspired have been hinted at by the guidelines set out by Combrink (1984: 100). (cf. p. 8-9) Smith (Die Naweek, 2/12/48) suggests the following criteria, some of which overlap with Combrink's:

‘1. Ons eie taalgevoel - maar ons moet darem enigsins oortuig wees dat dit behoorlik ontwikkel en gesond is.
2. Die taal van onvervalste Afrikaners - veral van ons ouer mense in streke wat die minste aan Engelse invloed blootgestel was.
3. Sewentiende-eeuse Nederlands, wat die grondvorm van

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Afrikaans is - veral die sewentiende-eeuse Nederlandse volkstaal, soos ons dit in die klugte en ander volksliteratuur kan sien.
4. Die streeksprake of dialekte van Nederlands...
5. Die moderne Nederlandse standaardtaal, wat net soos Afrikaans, uit die sewentiende-eeuse Nederlands ontwikkel het, en wat nie alleen tot onlangs toe dié erkende skryftaal van alle Afrikaners was nie, maar wat ook vandag nog ons skryftaal en hoëre spreektaal beïnvloed en verryk.’³

I would like to add the following comments to these points of Smith's. On point 2, Rousseau (1937:V) also advocates Boere-Afrikaans rather than Dutch as a means of identifying English influence. I feel inclined to question whether this method had much validity even then, but it certainly would not be valid now because of the effect of the mass media and the higher degree of bilingualism that now exists. In fact, in a review of Taalgoggas in die daelikse lewe by Twee Oud-onderwysers (1937) Smith (1962: 75) wrote:

‘Dr. Rousseau het Boere-Afrikaans as die beste toetssteen vir die ontdekking van 'n Anglicisme beskou, maar vir die Twee Oudonderwysers is die Dietse taaleie die beste maatstaf’,

but here it is obvious that Smith sees these two guidelines as ultimately amounting to the same thing(!).

Further to Smith's points 3 and 4, Valkhoff (1972:IX) reproduced Van Haeringen's review of Scholtz's Taalhistoriese Opstelle ‘as a warning to those South African Nederlandicists who think that they can explain everything in the development of Afrikaans by latent tendencies of seventeenth century Dutch and Dutch or Flemish dialects.’ Also with regard to point 4, it is interesting to note that Hasselmo (1961: 199), in his study of American Swedish, commented that ‘dialectal variations sometimes pose a problem by being indistinguishable from expected influences from English’.

In an article on the observations of M.D. Teenstra, a Dutchman who visited the Cape in 1825 and commented on how different Cape Dutch was, Franken (1953: 177) stated:

‘Dit is nie 'n toevalligheid dat onder die dagboekhouers en reisbeskrywers die belangrikste uitspraak insake die Kaap se

3 The influence of standard Dutch is undoubtedly less now than when Smith was writing in 1948, but nevertheless the role that Dutch continued to play in shaping Afrikaans throughout the nineteenth century and even after the official recognition of the language in 1925, has often been ignored or underestimated. (cf. Uys 1983)

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Hollands en die bewuste poging om dit weer te gee, gekom het van Nederlanders nie. Hulle het beskik oor 'n basis van vergelyking, wat aan die meeste andere wat Duitsers, Franse en Skandinawiërs was, ontbreek het.’

Even today Afrikaners must admit that a Dutchman has a unique vantage point from which to observe phenomena in Afrikaans that are unique to that language. Smith gives due recognition to the importance of modern standard Dutch in identifying English influence on Afrikaans in point 5. This attitude is supported by De Bruto (1970: 37):

‘Moet mens nie ook die huidige Nederlands tot vergelykingsbasis verhef nie?’

Nevertheless, Odendal (1973: 30) warns against taking the criterion of Dutch too far:

‘In die geval van Afrikaans moet ons daarteen waak om Nederlands as norm te aanvaar en wat daarvan afwyk, as korrup te beskou’.

Langenhoven (1935: 105) made an interesting comment which is of relevance here:

‘Oor die algemeen is dit te verwag, en vind ons dit ook, dat die Hollander wat Afrikaans via Nederlands aangeleer het, hom baie minder aan Anglisismes sal besondig as die Afrikaner wat lank en sterk onder Engelse taalinvloed was. Maar daardie Hollander, ook as hy meer en meer daartoe kom om sy eie neerlandismes te vermy, moenie vir hom verbeel dat hy van Nederlands Afrikaans maak eenvoudig deur weglating van verbuigings nie.’

My own experience of Afrikaans has borne out the truth of what he says, particularly with regard to having to (re-)introduce anglicisms into my Diets idiom in order to move closer to Afrikaans idiom.

I concede that Dutch can no longer be used as the norm in the way that the Twee Oud-onderwysers (1937) and even Rousseau (1937) used it, but where else can one begin when attempting to isolate the influence of English on Afrikaans from all the other factors that have contributed to the independent path that Afrikaans has opted to take away from Dutch? A knowledge of Dutch among South African linguists is nowadays not what it was nor, in my opinion, what it should be, and this situation could well become worse with present relations between Holland and South Africa

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being as they are. Such a knowledge is imperative for a thorough study of anglicisms in Afrikaans. The first generation of Afrikaans linguists did receive their training in Dutch, either in Holland or South Africa (e.g. S.P.E. Boshoff, J.L.M. Franken, D.B. Bosman, J.J. Smith), but they were more interested in die ontstaan van Afrikaans and in puristic aspects, than in the ‘impurities’ of the language.

There have been people in the past who have greatly oversimplified the identification of anglicisms in Afrikaans. There was a claim in Die Huisgenoot, for example, that Dutch is the only norm ‘waaraan ons kan toets wanneer 'n woord of uitdrukking ons uit Engels bereik het.’ (Redaksioneel 29/8/52.) Schonken, on the other hand, also writing in Die Huisgenoot, maintained that:

‘'n Gemaklike manier om dit uit te vind is veelal om die uitdrukking letterlik of woordelik in Engels oor te sit. As hierdie vertaling dan 'n verstaanbare goeie Engelse spreekwyse met presies dieselfde betekenis uitmaak dan het ons in 90 uit die 100 gevalle met 'n Anglisisme te doen.’ (July 1918)

This is of course a dubious statement if for no other reason than the fact that it underestimates the Indo-European heritage common to both English and Afrikaans, as well as common cultural factors such as classical antiquity and the Bible. The latter, for example, has provided all the languages of Europe with many expressions which are often no longer recognised as being biblical in origin, e.g. ‘to cast pearls before the swine’ - pêrels voor die swyne werp (Matt. 7: 6), ‘the salt of the earth’ - die sout van die aarde (Matt. 5: 13), ‘a wolf in sheep's clothing’ - 'n wolf in skaapsklere (Matt. 7: 15). As a final condemnation of Schonken's over-simplified approach I quote Combrink (1984: 96) again from an article where he spends pages enunciating the many things Afrikaans and English have in common:

‘Uit hierdie beknopte oorsig blyk dit dat daar talle redes is waarom Afrikaans en Engels duisende parallelle taalbousels het. Dit is onregverdig om, sonder verdere ondersoek, 'n taalbousel wat in Afrikaans gebruik word, as 'n Anglisisme te bestempel bloot omdat dié taalbousel 'n parallel in Engels het. Maar hiermee word nie die feit weggepraat dat Engels wel 'n diepgaande invloed op Afrikaans gehad het en nog het nie.’

The problem of distinguishing English influence from the common heritage is indeed quite considerable, as the following expressions will serve to illustrate: dit belowe om goed te word, in die ope lug, dagdroom

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(verb and noun). These are examples that are found in English, Afrikaans and Dutch; therefore what is the source? A common cultural and linguistic heritage of course. But the problem is greater still, as the following expressions illustrate: die kind met die badwater uitgooi, hulle is op goeie voet, die aap uit die mou laat. These are examples of expressions that exist in Dutch too, and which one would thus be inclined to see as belonging to that part of Afrikaans inherited directly from Dutch, but the form they have assumed in Afrikaans resembles the idiom of English rather than that of Dutch. In these cases Dutch says het kind met het badwater weggooien, zij staan op goede voet, de aap komt uit de mouw (different meaning also), (cf. footnote 8, p. 180) Thus there are degrees of English influence to be found in the idiom of Afrikaans. Without a knowledge of Dutch there is nothing whatsoever to indicate that an expression such as dit reën katte en honde does not belong to the common linguistic and cultural heritage shared by English, Afrikaans and Dutch.

The real point is not ultimately whether a given structure definitely is or is not by origin an anglicism in Afrikaans, but whether it is perceived by the majority of native-speakers to be acceptable Afrikaans, regardless of whether it replaces or complements an equivalent Afrikaans expression or not. Compilers of descriptive and even prescriptive works such as HAT and WAT must in future take this much more into account than has been the case so far, and base their decisions on whether to incorporate a given expression or word on common usage, and not on their own value judgements.

Proof of the source of any given ‘suspect’ phenomenon in Afrikaans is virtually impossible; if one first has to prove that something is English in origin before one may even postulate that this is the case, a start will never be made in investigating the degree to which English has influenced Afrikaans. What constitutes absolute proof anyway, particularly when the two languages are as closely related as English and Afrikaans?

‘Theories are all very well, but in the end they have to be proved or disproved. And just because one has proof that one element of Afrikaans originated in some specific way, say under the influence of the Dutch dialect Hollands, this does not constitute proof that all the structural aspects of Afrikaans are of Hollands descent. What I am implying is that the truth about the origin of Afrikaans has many facets.’ (Combrink 1978: 70)

This comment of Combrink's is of particular relevance to the many phenomena one often reads of as having occurred in older Dutch or still occurring in Dutch dialects. Just because certain typically Afrikaans structures that differ from ABN are to be found in Dutch dialects or in

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seventeenth century Dutch, one cannot at all necessarily conclude that they are the source thereof in Afrikaans; that may or may not be the case, or a combination of factors may have contributed to the presence of a given linguistic form in Afrikaans. (cf. 6.3) Smith (Die Naweek, 10/2/49), in his discussion on the expression welaf, states that Schonken mentions it occurs in the dialect of Oud-Ablas. Smith then quotes Rousseau:

‘Om 'n verdagte Afrikaanse taaleenheid op rekening van 'n miskien onbeduidende Nederlandse dialek te skuiwe net omdat dit daar aangetref word, getuig van veel minder wetenskaplike sin as om dit aan die in Suid-Afrika so kragtige Engelse invloed toe te skrywe.’

Francken (1912: 280), in his discussion of certain possible anglicisms in Afrikaans, states:

‘Deze vormen behoeven dus nog geen Anglicismen te zijn. Daarmede is niet gezegd dat ze het niet kunnen zijn... Evenals er Anglicismen en Anglicismen zijn, zijn er ook aanhalingen en aanhalingen.’

In other words, just because a particular construction occurs somewhere in literature, that is not to say that it is common and thus, in this context, that Dutch is the source of it in Afrikaans. Some concrete examples of the sort of debate that has arisen with regard to whether certain Afrikaans phenomena are or are not Dutch in origin, are given here to illustrate the problem. Probably more common than sowel...as in Afrikaans today is the expression beide...en which many prescriptive works, regardless of its common usage, still insist is an anglicism that should be avoided. Smith (1962: 67) maintains that it occurs in the Statenvertaling of the Bible but quite correctly adds the rider ‘dat 'n uitdrukking nietteenstaande sy bestaan in Nederlands tog direkt uit Engels in Afrikaans kan gekom het’. In other words, one must not ignore the possibility - often even the probability - of English being the source of many phenomena in Afrikaans, even though one may have concrete evidence of their former presence in standard Dutch or in the dialects. The same argument applies to the meaning of braaf, for example, where Le Roux (1952: 35), to name but one who has discussed this word, maintains it meant ‘brave’ in seventeenth century Dutch and thus ‘Engels kan hoogstens 'n behoudende invloed gehad het’ - that is to say, the contributing factor theory (cf. 6.3), which is open to debate. Then there are the semantics of bly, which Le Roux puts in the same category as braaf. This word has also often been the regarded as ‘suspect’ in Afrikaans (it is even recorded by Changuion in 1844), but no South African writer on the topic seems to have been aware that ‘to stay’ in

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the meaning of ‘to live’ is, at least these days, peculiar to South African English. Brachin (1970: 126) even suggested that bly may well be a translation of rester and thus of Huguenot origin (which is highly unlikely), although Hegmann (1983: 72) countered that theory by pointing out that the OED gives ‘to remain’ as meaning ‘to have one's abode, to dwell (obsol.).’

Terblanche writes that he had always regarded agter skool bly as an anglicism because agter can only be used with place in Afrikaans but ‘Ondersoek het egter aan die lig gebring dat agter in MNL en sewentiende-eeuse Nederlands i.v.m. “tyd” gebruik is, en aangesien dit aansluit by die Afrikaanse agterbly (b.v. jy moet agterbly) kan agter skool bly nie sonder 'n redelike mate van twyfel as 'n Anglisisme beskou word nie.’ (Die Brandwag, 25/10/46)

Finally, Smith (1962: 67) pointed out that it is always possible, although I feel that this is seldom the case, that a given structure that occurs in Dutch as well as Afrikaans may well be an anglicism in Dutch too. He then gives several examples, among which die trein mis and uitvind, where I would question his reasons for regarding these expressions as anglicisms in Dutch.

Scholtz (n.d:45) commenting on L.H. Meurant's Afrikaans, states:

‘Uit die aard van die saak word net aandag gegee aan konstruksies wat nie Nederlands is nie. Ook hier kan die moeilikheid hom voordoen dat dit nie te sê is of 'n bepaalde konstruksie wesenlik van Nederlands afwyk nie. Die waarneembare verskille is dikwels ook so weinig skerp dat hul nie met 'n paar woorde kan verduidelik word nie... Dikwels lê die verskil in die voorkeur wat aan 'n bepaalde konstruksie gegee word.’

Further on, on page 46, he quotes the example of ek hoop so (Dt. ik hoop het), often regarded as English in origin, which he discovered in the writing of a Huguenot settler from the time of W.A. van der Stel. This could be significant given that French has the same idiom here as Dutch.

‘Wil ons nou die aard en omvang van taalvermenging in 'n spesiale geval grondig bestudeer, dan moet ons van die grondooreenkoms maar veral van die grondverskille wat tale aanbied, duidelik bewus wees’. (Malherbe 1937)

What Malherbe calls the grondooreenkoms is of particular interest and importance in the contact situation under discussion here. Not only the

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inherited common features of English and Dutch/Afrikaans, but also the parallel development with English that particularly Afrikaans, as opposed to Dutch, has undergone since 1652 has led past scholars to wrongly postulate English influence, e.g. Du Toit (1897: iv), Valkhoff (1972: 29).

Kempen (1969: 610) warns that ‘As 'n taalkundige 'n taalvorm Anglisisties noem,... moet hy grond onder sy voete hê.’ Combrink (1984: 100) implies the same thing. One cannot deny that these scholars' warnings must be heeded when embarking on this topic, but nevertheless I feel that such statements are likely to intimidate one into ignoring the many cases where English influence, although it cannot be proven, is at very least possible and often even probable. At times the basis for my claims will indeed rest merely on possibility. In taking this attitude I am, however, supported by Le Roux (1952: 12) who maintained that ‘By gebrek aan bewys vir die teendeel moet ons dus aanneem dat die gemelde uitdrukking in Afrikaans 'n Anglisisme is’, although his use of aanneem here goes too far for my liking too.

The above cases will have to suffice at this stage to illustrate the many difficulties that confront the research worker in attempting to identify English influence in Afrikaans. They should serve to help understand why perhaps in recent times scholars have been intimidated into keeping their distance from the topic.

In addition to the knowledge of Dutch at my disposal as a basis for comparison as a primary step towards recognising where English has been the motivating factor in the development of Afrikaans along a separate tangent to standard Dutch, I found the following procedures also of some use. I noticed that many of my observations of Afrikaans coincided with my experience as a teacher of Dutch to native-speakers of English. I then went in search of the common errors made by these people when speaking Dutch and found quite a number of them to be present in Afrikaans too, either ingeburger, on the way to becoming so, or still at the level of interference; for example, no distinction between onthouden and zich herinneren, confusion of brengen and nemen, omission of the reflexive pronoun with certain verbs, to name but a few.

Ostyn's (1972) dissertation on English interference in the Dutch of Flemish immigrants living in Chicago and Nijenhuis' (1967) semi-popular Het Nederlands in Australië were also referred to in order to see what interference phenomena they had ascertained in their respective bilingual situations. I then followed these up in Afrikaans and found many of them also present there. This exercise was conducted more out of interest than as a serious means of expanding my corpus. Nevertheless, examples found in

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Ostyn and Nijenhuis which coincide with Afrikaans usage, are referred to in the course of this work.

There is also that small number of cases where South African English and Afrikaans share a structure which is foreign to both British English and Dutch. In such instances it can be difficult to ascertain where the source is, for example bly in the sense of ‘live, dwell’, which was referred to above; the pronunciation of ‘i’ in stressed syllables as [ə] and word order in indirect questions such as kan jy vir my sê hoe laat is dit? - can you tell me what is the time? (instead of ‘...what the time is?’); alles van die beste - everything of the best (South African English for ‘all the best’).

In deciding on whether a given example is or is not possibly due to English influence and thus worthy of inclusion in my corpus, I found it advisable also to keep German usage in mind. If something is unknown to modern Dutch, but present in German, this would seem to be an indication of common Germanic origin and thus claiming English influence in such a case could be irresponsible, e.g. the use of meen instead of bedoel where German also uses meinen. Generally keeping German usage in mind would seem to be supported by Ponelis (1979: 442) where in his monumental work on Afrikaans syntax, he makes the following statement with reference to a particular structure:

‘Sover vasgestel kon word, ken Duits en Nederlands nie skoon bysinne [i.e. with omission of dat] in hierdie verbande nie, dus kan Engelse inwerking wat dit betref nie uitgesluit word nie.’

In the realm of what is commonly referred to as ‘international’ vocabulary, for want of a better name, English is undoubtedly the channel through which many loanwords reached Afrikaans, which is not so in Holland where until relatively recently it has been predominantly through French. It is of course often difficult to prove when such words were borrowed into Afrikaans and whether they came via Dutch or were direct borrowings from English in South Africa - the Norman heritage of England is the complicating factor here. Afrikaans does however have many loanwords which, although compiled from Latin and Greek roots, are unknown to Dutch or even French, the most common source of the majority of these words in Dutch until relatively recent times, e.g. applikant, bewerasie, kompeteer, motoris. Then there are those which, although found in Dutch, have a meaning in Afrikaans more akin to that of the English cognate than the Dutch one, e.g. eventueel, definitief. In order to be assimilated into Afrikaans such words required French garb and have thus become indistinguishable from loanwords that have come from French via Dutch, or more correctly those that could have come from that

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source. Of relevance here is Hiemstra's (1963: 9) observation with regard to a common puristic avoidance of such words in Afrikaans:

‘dat die afgekeurde woorde, al is hulle nie op sigself in Afrikaans aan Engels ontleen nie, tog in 'n dergelike aanwending onder Engelse invloed gebesig word; ten aansien van hulle frekwensie, so nie hulle herkoms nie, kan hulle dus wel Anglisismes wees.’

This international vocabulary is not of course at all difficult to trace in Afrikaans, but proving the source thereof is a different matter. I would feel inclined to add to Combrink's requirements set out on pages 8-9 ‘a good command of French’.

The only practical means of monitoring, with any degree of consistency, whether examples in the corpus which are not found in modern ABN have ever occurred in Dutch, is by consulting the Woordenboek der Nederlandsche Taal. This dictionary is as complete a record as we have of every new word that has appeared in Dutch texts since the late sixteenth century. Boshoff and Nienaber (1967: 18) do mention one reservation one should keep in mind when referring to the WNY for enlightenment on Afrikaans issues:

‘Ons moet onthou dat die gegewens insake Nederlandse dialekte in WNT dikwels betrekking het op die hedendaagse dialekte en derhalwe met versigtigheid gehanteer moet word.’

He goes on to suggest that one also make use of Kiliaen's late sixteenth century dictionary which refers to the dialects the words occur in.

I have made only haphazard reference to WAY as its present incomplete state prevents consistency and as I feel that even what has appeared so far, some of which is already more than thirty-five years old, does not reflect reality any more with regard to the recognition of English structures. One wonders in fact whether it did even in 1950. Instead I have opted for HAT. It is admittedly only a handwoordeboek, but quite a substantial one at that. It is at least complete and whatever competition it may have and whatever criticisms there may be of it, it simply is now regarded as the dictionary of Afrikaans by die majority of people, at least until such time as WAT is completed (and revised?). Reference is sometimes made to HAT's attitude to examples in the corpus and HAY's treatment of anglicisms in general is discussed under 3.4.2.