The Influence of English on Afrikaans

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Chapter Two

2.0 What is an anglicism?

2.1 The reasons for the interference-cum-influence

I have no intention of looking at the psychological processes behind interference phenomena in bilingual individuals, as Rousseau did for example, firstly because such principles apply to all bilingual situations and are not peculiar to South Africa, and secondly because they pertain more to the field of psychology than linguistics. The socio-political causes of interference in South Africa will be dealt with in only a perfunctory fashion, because this aspect was so thoroughly and competently covered by Rousseau that it would be difficult to improve upon; it is of course also an aspect of the topic whose validity has not been lessened by the passage of time, unlike his corpus. But aspects of the socio-political causes of interference and linguistic change, where they are peculiar to, or are of particular importance to, the South African situation, are dealt with here.

The regional frequency of anglicisms, and the degree to which these may be gradually contributing to dialect formation in Afrikaans, is another aspect of the topic which I do not deal with here. As a non-Afrikaner and a non-resident of the Republic, I am incapable of looking at that aspect of English influence on Afrikaans and, as far as I am aware, no-one else has done so either, although the possibility of its existence is hinted at in an article by Du Plessis (1983: 43) on Johannesburgse omgangstaal. One would expect the influence to be greater in Cape Town, the Eastern Province and the Rand than in the Free State and the Western Transvaal, for instance, but there are as yet no empirical data to prove this is the case.

2.1.1 The historical facts behind the contact between English and Afrikaans

The historical facts of the British take-over of the Cape and subsequent legislation aimed at anglicising the Afrikaner are known backwards by any White child that goes through the South African schools' system. On the basis of these facts one may feel justified in seeing 1795, the year of the first British occupation, as the obvious terminus a quo of English influence on the Dutch dialect of the colony. However, history does not provide us with much evidence at all with which to fix a date from which English, the language of the administration from 1795 - with the exception of the years

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1803-1806 when the Cape was briefly returned to the Dutch - began to make inroads into the idiom of the Dutch population. Tracing the early history of English influence on the language, one is faced with the same problem which has confronted the many scholars who have attempted to research the origins of Afrikaans - the almost total lack of texts in Afrikaans prior to the 1860's. One can probably assume that English influence did not reach much beyond Cape Town during the first period of British occupation, but how great it was and how far it stretched after 1806 is also very difficult to determine. Nevertheless, few would disagree that from the time of the arrival of the 1820 settlers in the Eastern Province, the scene was set for extensive mutual influence of the two languages. Their arrival was also followed in the 1820's by the notorious anglicisation policies of Lord Charles Somerset. That these policies were ultimately unsuccessful goes without saying, but the degree to which they contributed already at that early date to the influence that English was to have on Afrikaans, can only be guessed at. Boshoff (1921: 408) maintains that in 1828 there were only 7,000 Englishmen in the colony, as opposed to 25,000 Dutchmen; 5,000 of these English people had come as 1820 settlers, which means there were proportionately very few English speaking people indeed in the Cape prior to 1820.

The earliest concrete evidence of English influence that has come down to us is the famous work of A.N.E. Changuion (1844) De Nederduitsche taal in Zuid-Afrika hersteld. Pheiffer (1979: 3) refers to him as the first bewuste dokumenteerder of English influence. Changuion, being a Dutchman newly arrived in the Cape, was disturbed at the degree to which Cape Dutch deviated from the idiom of Holland and he set about to help remedy the situation with this work which he wrote in his capacity as a teacher. Of course his interest is directed at everything in Afrikaans that deviated from what he considered to be correct Dutch, not just at English interference, but nevertheless a considerable number of his observations deal with this aspect. Changuion's book is looked at in more detail in 3.1.1. Suffice it to say here that of the 424 lemmas in his list of ‘mistakes’, 32 are marked (E.) and 14 are clearly implied as being of English origin. In addition, I presume another 4 of the phenomena he noted are English in origin although he does not acknowledge them as such. This means that circa 12% of his corpus of noteworthy divergencies in Cape Dutch, collected only 24 years after the arrival of the 1820 settlers, is the direct result of interference from English. Although much of Changuion's corpus has since passed into oblivion, several of his anglicisms are now an indispensable part of Afrikaans.

The terminus a quo is thus open to some debate, the terminus ad quem, the point at which English influence will cease, will undoubtedly never come. Any study of the topic can only ever capture on paper the state of affairs at

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that particular point in history, for the process is an ongoing and never-ending one.

Heese published a study in 1971 entitled Die herkoms van die Afrikaner 1657-1867. This provides some interesting statistics on the English contribution to Afrikaner blood, without any comment being passed on the linguistic ramifications thereof, however. In the period 1808-1836 the British contribution was particularly high and English blood contributed to 35.3% of births in mixed marriages, but the overall contribution of English blood to Afrikaner stock was only 2.6% at this time:

‘Die Britse bydrae is nie so hoog soos die groot getal Engelse stamvaders sou laat vermoed het nie. Dit is so omdat die Britse bydrae so laat eers plaasgevind het’. (p. 36)

Heese also maintains that a large number of English speaking people settled in the small dorps of the platteland, even in the Boer republics. He claims that 1,272 of the 2,868 foreign progenitors for the period 1838-1867 were English, i.e. 44.5%. Once again, however, the overall total is still quite low because of the relatively late arrival of the English - in 1867 it was 5.3%.

In the eighteenth century there were more non-White speakers of Afrikaans than White. By the end of the nineteenth century the proportion was fifty-fifty. Ponelis (in a lecture delivered in Bloemfontein in 1983), leaning on Heese's research, saw the English as the main contributing factor to the verblanking of the Afrikaner. In addition he postulated that English did not get a grip on the Coloureds of Cape Town for quite a long time and that for decades in the nineteenth century the Coloureds were virtually the only Dutch speaking people in the city.

During the previous century English became, and has remained, the language of contact with the outside world. But Afrikaans did not live in complete isolation from Dutch, which always remained a potential source of vocabulary with which to counteract English vocabulary. To a certain degree this is even still the case, although becoming less and less so, and a great deal of relexification took place as late as the 1930's, after Afrikaans had replaced Dutch as the country's second official language. From the beginning English has been, and has remained, the language of the minority in the White community. Nevertheless ‘...het Engels vanweë sy bevoorregte posisie in die Kaapkolonie en in Natal en ten gevolge van 'n doelbewuste Angliseringsproses wat veral van die Kaap uit op allerlei gebiede tot in die Republieke gepropageer is, 'n sterker houvas gekry as wat die getalsterkte van die Engelssprekendes sou laat vermoed het. (Boshoff & Nienaber 1967: 29) Further on Boshoff and Nienaber quote

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Lord Henry de Villiers who predicted in 1876 ‘dat nòg Hollands nòg Afrikaans 'n “toekoms” in Suid-Afrika het en dat alleen met Engels iets bereik sou word.’ (p. 29)

Much has been written about the threats to the continued existence of Afrikaans in the nineteenth century in the face of competition from English, but such writings always completely ignore the Coloured, whose only medium of expression was Afrikaans, as well as the fact that the threat was not nearly as great in the Boer republics where the language of administration and education was Dutch. It is curious that so little attention has been paid to the linguistic situation in the Orange Free State and Transvaal in the nineteenth century; scholars have been overwhelmingly concerned with the Cape and have ignored the republics to a great extent. Boshoff (1921: 409) has the following to say on the situations in the Cape and the Boer republics:

‘...soos die Eerste Afrikaanse-Taalbeweging van 1875 af in die Kaap Kolonie die vervormingsproses van Afrikaans deur Engels gestuit het, so sou die Twede Afrikaanse-Taalbeweging van omstreeks 1905 af al meer en meer 'n kragtige reaksie in die lewe roep teen 'n herhaling van dieselfde proses in die Vrystaat en Transvaal en 'n voortsetting daarvan in die Kaap Kolonie.’

Du Toit (1965: 128) offers the following on developments north of the Orange where decisions were made ‘...teen direkte taaldwang van Engelse kant in die twee republieke in die Noorde. Maar selfs ook hier is die aanleer van Engels van regeringsweë aangemoedig. Die Transvaalse regulasies van 1866 al maak voorsiening vir onderwys in die Engelse taal. Onderwysers met kennis van Engels kry die voorkeur by aanstellings.’ Du Toit maintains it was not uncommon for people in the Transvaal to send their children to schools in the Cape to learn English as in the Transvaal after 1882 Dutch was declared the only possible medium of instruction, although ‘die wet word nie streng gehandhaaf nie.’ (p. 128) He says that English was even more popular in the Free State than in the Transvaal at this time as it had already become the language of commerce in the north as well as the south. The zenith of anglicisation was reached in the British concentration camps during the Boer War where the exclusive medium of instruction in camp schools was English, with the exception of classes in divinity. The post-war period finally brought a gradual reversal of the English injustices of the previous century, but meanwhile a favourable climate for the continued influence of English had been created which nothing would reverse.

Pienaar (1931: 172-3) quotes the example of J.H.H. de Waal's novel

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Johannes van Wyk (1904), the first of the so-called Second Language Movement, to illustrate the extent of English influence at that time. De Waal was a member of the Leidsche Maatschappij der Nederlandsche Letterkunde and president of the Afrikaanse Taal Vereniging and yet the original version of his novel ‘laat duidelik sien hoe De Waal moes worstel om koers te kry tussen Engels en Hollands deur... Op oortuiende wyse blyk hier dat Afrikaans al mooi op weg was om 'n mengeltaal te word onder Engelse invloed, veral in Kaapland, en dat die Afrikaanse Taalbeweging nog net betyds gekom het om 'n gestadige verval in hierdie rigting te stuit... En as eerste pennevrug van die twede Afrikaanse Taalbeweging het hierdie roman ook meteen die absolute noodsaaklikheid en bestaansreg van die beweging geregverdig.’ Johannes van Wyk was revised five times between 1904 and 1921 and each time more anglicisms were removed: ‘Uit die vyfde druk blyk egter dat Johannes van Wyk aan 'n ongeneeslike kwaal ly.’ (p. 174)

It is a strange quirk of fate that whereas the primary threat to Afrikaans in the nineteenth century was in the Cape, nowadays it is in the Transvaal with the extraordinarily dominant role that Johannesburg plays in South African society, it being the seat of the SABC, the English press (read by many Afrikaners) and the commercial heart of the nation.

Coetzee (1939: 17) sees the growth of the Reef as being the most important factor in the development of English influence:

‘Hulle [i.e. the English] invloed op die taal van die Hollands-Afrikaanse Koloniste het egter baie gering gebly tot en met die ontdekking van diamante en goud in Suid-Afrika in die derde kwart van die vorige eeu.’

That this was the case in the Transvaal cannot be questioned but Changuion's (1844) and even Mansvelt's (1884) works attest to that not being the case in the Cape.

Referring to the early nineteenth century colonists in South Africa, Pheiffer (1979: 2) says of them:

‘Hulle het hul nie verset teen die invoering van Engels nie, maar waaroor daar wel gegriefdheid ontstaan het, was die verdringing en verlies van die Nederlandse taal en kultuur wat beoog is.’

The result of the introduction of English combined with the colonists'

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stubborn refusal to give up their native Dutch, is Afrikaans as we know it today, or, to quote Du Toit (1965: 128):

‘Vir sover dit die algehele uitroeiing van Afrikaans, wortel en tak, en die onmiddellike vervanging daarvan deur Engels betref, het die politiek van die negentiende-eeuse maghebbers aan die Kaap misluk; waar hulle egter wel in geslaag het, was om die bodem te berei vir, en ten dele ook te beplant met, 'n skaar van Anglisismes.’

Afrikaans may well have acquired the majority of its typical phonological and morphological traits before the arrival of the British at the end of the eighteenth century, but the process of change did not stop there: a new era of change, a different sort of change, simply dawned, (cf. 4.5) It is interesting to note in this regard that, as Viljoen pointed out in 1896, it was not uncommon at that time for people to see many of the analytical changes that had occurred in Afrikaans as the result of English influence, whereas it is unquestionably accepted these days that this situation had already been reached prior to the arrival of the British and is simply the result of parallel development in both Cape Dutch and English. (cf. 6.2) Even Du Toit (1897:iv), a foundation member of the Genootskap van Regte Afrikaanders, was guilty at the time of exaggerating the influence English had had on the grammar of the language:

‘It is striking in Cape Dutch, that the body of the language (the dictionary) remained purely Germanic; in fact the purest Germanic language in existence; but the soul of the language (the grammar), the inflexions and idioms are greatly modified according to the French (by the Huguenots) and English. Everywhere in the inflexions, idioms syntax etc. we meet the influence of those two languages, while hardly a dozen French and some 50 English words have been taken up in Cape Dutch.’

The dissension that existed among Afrikaners after the formation of the Genootskap in 1875 between those who supported maintaining Dutch and those who supported its abolition in favour of Afrikaans, may well ironically have furthered the position of English. The situation we have today where Afrikaners feel English to be less foreign than Dutch had apparently already been reached by the late nineteenth century, as the following quote from Langenhoven (1926: 112) indicates:

‘In our opinion no greater injustice could be done to our country than by forcing upon us a worthless and insignificant language (Dutch), especially after it has clearly been shown

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that the rising generation takes to English more easily and appreciates it more readily than Dutch.’

Langenhoven made this statement in 1893 during his student days when he was a member of the debating society at the University of Stellenbosch.

In Die Huisgenoot of 16/3/34 Du Toit (1965) gives a brief history of the anglicisation of the Afrikaner, particularly in the nineteenth century. He maintains that by the end of the century the language was not the same as at the beginning:

‘In hierdie tydsverloop het daar baie aan die inhoud en wese van die taal verander: dit het geword 'n instrument waarvan ontwikkeldes hulle ook kon begin bedien. Veel hiervan was natuurlik die resultaat van ontlening en aanpassing aan die skryftaal, Nederlands - dog vir baie het die taal hom ook verbreed en verdiep deur die opname van elemente uit Engels.’

Another comment on the degree of English influence from the beginning of this century is provided by De Wet (1906) in De Unie:

‘Het is opmerkelijk hoe, zelfs van onze knapste lieden, die de graden van B.A. en M.A. hebben behaald, gedurig in Anglicismen vervallen. Dit bewijst, dat de oude, afgezaagde stelling: Laat 't kind Engels leren, want Hollands komt vanzelf, nu moet omgekeerd worden: Laat 't kind Hollands leren, want Engels komt vanzelf... Tans is de lucht als 't ware met Engels bezwangerd, en iedereen ademt 't onwillekeurig in.’

As the reader will have observed, De Wet wrote in Dutch, being a member of the anti-Afrikaans lobby that was losing ground by this time. He gives two reasons for opposing Afrikaans, one of them being: ‘omdat we dan gevaar lopen om al de Anglicismen en Barbarisman te behouden.’ Dutch would always remain the medium of Holland in bruikleen in South Africa with the possiblity of looking back to usage in Holland ‘to mend one's ways’, as it were. But Afrikaans with its anglicisms, and even because of them, is a far truer mirror of South African society and culture.

Many of these early statements on the influence English was having on Dutch/Afrikaans attribute the problem to the state of education at the time and the fact, for example, that Dutch lessons were often, if not usually, given in English. But nowadays, where the situation with regard to

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education is vastly different from the nineteenth and early twentieth century, the problem exists just as much, if not more so.

After the Boer War, with the beginning of the taalstryd, ‘increasingly language became a political issue and hostility to English developed in predominantly Afrikaans speaking communities. In these communities English declined in quality and quantity, accelerated by the dwindling numbers of English speakers in the smaller towns in the Orange Free State and the Transvaal... The lowest ebb [in the standard of English among Afrikaners] was probably in the 1950's... Impressionistically, one would judge the low ebb of English in the Afrikaner population in the 1950's as having passed. A new motivation to competence in English exists for younger members of this population, particularly those who are better educated and are urban dwelling.’ (Lanham 1978: 21) It is a curious state of affairs that the better educated Afrikaner, who has a high competence in English, is likely to speak a purer Afrikaans than a working class man whose mastery of English is imperfect: exaggerated use of anglicisms is considered platvloers in South Africa. It seems that competence in English is no guide at all to the degree of interference in the Afrikaans of a given speaker; the higher the register, the purer (more Dutch?) his language is likely to be, whereas the lower the register, the more infiltration of English one can expect to find, for example: swearwords and general slang. (cf. 7.29.1)

2.1.2 The nature of the contact situation in which English and Afrikaans find themselves

In their controversial book on the Broederbond, Wilkins and Strydom (1980: 137) make the following comment on acculturation tendencies in South African society:

‘...we can only envisage either the deliberate Afrikanerising of the English speakers or the silent acceptance of the unintentional but certain Anglicising of the Afrikaner.’

Clearly the latter is already proving to be the case. But what these authors say of the two factions of White society applied equally to their languages:

‘Namate die Afrikaans- en Engelssprekende bevolkingsgroepe in die Republiek van Suid-Afrika in die toekoms nader na mekaar toe groei, moet ons selfs ontlenings oor en weer verwag...’. (Boshoff i.a. 1964: 34)

Boshoff does not give any indication, however, of the degree to which the

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mutual influence differs between the two languages, which is undoubtedly the case. Le Roux (1952: 2) comes nearer to the mark when he states:

‘Die feitlike toestand [as far as bilingualism in South Africa is concerned] is dus dat, terwyl daar die natuurlike strewe by die toonaangewendes onder beide Engels- en Afrikaanssprekende groepe is om hulle moedertaal so suiwer as moontlik te hou, daar 'n groot groep sg. Afrikaanssprekendes is wat aan die afsak is na 'n mengeltaal. Hierdie groep word nie in ewewig gehou deur 'n ooreenkomstige groep Engelssprekendes nie.’

If what Le Roux says here was valid in 1945, when he first wrote it, how much more must it be the case now?

Coetzee's (1948: 21) remark that English speaking people, in learning Afrikaans, have made a contribution to the frequency of anglicisms in that language has already been questioned on page 17. Le Roux (1926: 334) too, writing on so-called ismes in general in Afrikaans, wrote:

‘'n Ander manier waarop die moedertaal beïnvloed word, is dat vreemdelinge dit baie praat en sodoende woorde, woordbetekenisse of konstruksies van hulle eie taal daarin oorbring, wat dan weer deur die oorspronkelike sprekers van die taal oorgeneem word.’

This is a theory which is laboured by Raidt throughout her book in German on the history of Afrikaans (1983): she continually emphasises her belief in the contribution of foreign language speakers to the development of Afrikaans, as opposed to the contribution from their languages per se. In this I would feel inclined to agree with her in as far as her theory refers to contact with the Khoisan peoples, Malays, Germans, Huguenots etc. during the period of the so-called ontstaan van Afrikaans in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. I do not think it applies, however, to the contact with English. Here we are without doubt concerned with influence emanating from the language and Afrikaners' familiarity with it, rather than with interference phenomena in the Afrikaans of English speakers. In this regard the English element in Afrikaans differs from all other so-called ismes in Afrikaans about which so much has been written.

Bosman (1923: 41), quoting Boshoff, who in turn is quoting Postma, advocates the reverse theory to Raidt:

‘Ds. Postma soek die verklaring dus nie in 'n adapsie van die taal deur vreemdelinge en 'n terugwerking daarvan op die taal

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van die Afrikaanse volk nie, maar 'n aanpassing deur die volk self van hulle taal aan hulle omgewing.’

Here, once again, reference is being made to the factors that shaped Afrikaans in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and in that context I cannot endorse it. It does, however, in my opinion apply quite neatly to the process that is occurring in Afrikaans with regard to English influence. The Afrikaners' omgewing, now that the vast majority of them are urbanised or at very least within easy reach of the electronic media, is unavoidably and increasingly dominated by English as English is their inherited window on the world - in fact an invaluable asset which they now acquire with a minimum of effort - through which increasing contact with that wider world is maintained. The days of the laager mentality are past for the majority of Afrikaners, a situation made possible to a large extent by their contact with English.

Because of the degree of cultural assimilation to which the Afrikaner has been subjected, often unwittingly or even unwillingly, the following process is occurring:

‘Die Engels-onkundige neem onbewus Engelshede oor van ander Engels-onkundiges, wat dit op hulle beurt by Engelskundiges gekry het’ (Redaksioneel, Die Huisgenoot 29/8/52)

where by Engelskundiges I assume the author means bilingual Afrikaners. Surely the frequent number of anglicisms one hears even in the Afrikaans of pre-school children, whose bilingual abilities have scarcely been developed if at all, are an indication that we now have to do with linguistic change in this particular contact situation which has long since gone beyond the realm of mere interference phenomena, although it cannot be denied that many phenomena are, at least for the time being, still at this stage.

Diglossia, as originally defined by Ferguson (1959), referred to two varieties of a language - a higher and lower variant where the lower is not written - being used side by side as in the case of High German and Swiss German in Switzerland. Undoubtedly the relationship of Dutch to Afrikaans in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries often fitted this mold. This definition of diglossia was, however, expanded somewhat by Fishman in 1967 to cover situations where two separate languages, as opposed to variants of the same language, compete with each other for a function in the social spectrum of a bilingual community. (cf. Timm 1980: 33) This revised definition can now be applied, with some qualification, to the relationship between English and Afrikaans in South Africa, certainly in the past and perhaps even in the present. Prior to the official recognition and consequent nurturing of Afrikaans, that language hovered in a

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diglossia relationship between Dutch on the one hand (still referred to by many in South Africa as Hooghollands) and English on the other. It was under these conditions that Afrikaans, to a greater extent than Dutch in South Africa, was influenced by English; but because the line between Afrikaans and Dutch was often a thin one, English must also gradually have begun to affect the higher variant. Nevertheless speakers of Dutch could always look back to the Dutch of Holland to determine what was ‘correct’; this was not the case with the lower variant. Thus, when Afrikaans replaced Dutch, it opened the flood-gates to English influence in the official written language as well as in the spoken language. (cf. H.C. de Wet's comment p. 34)

Schonken (1914: 193), writing in 1914, by which time the pro-Afrikaans lobby was making great gains, has the following to say on the intellectual development of the Afrikaner:

‘Tot op laten leeftijd telt men in 't Engelsch, houdt men briefwisseling in het Engelsch, dicht, zingt en leest man bijna uitsluitend in het Engelsch, spreekt men aardrijkskundige, en technische woorden op zijn Engelsch uit...’

What he is describing is the de facto diglossia situation where the social function that English played at the time is obvious from the phenomena he mentions. It is maintained that formerly English was even the language used for telephone conversations, which gave rise to the joke that a Black servant, when asked by her master to answer the phone for him, replied Maar Baas, ek kan nie Engels praat nie. Such diglossia functions of English were still prevalent long after the time that Schonken was writing, for example: counting in English and making out cheques in English.

Few in South Africa today would think of the relationship between English and Afrikaans in terms of diglossia any more but I agree with Van Rensburg (1983: 18) that the concept has not altogether died out yet, despite the progress made by Afrikaans since the turn of the century to achieve equality with English:

‘Waar daar van twee ampstale sprake is, soos in Suid-Afrika, is diglossie 'n opmerklike verskynsel onder baie sprekers: vir hulle is daar 'n duidelik onderskeibare verskil tussen die funksies van Afrikaans teenoor die funksies van Engels. Hierdie onderskeiding hoef nie in alle gevalle getref te word nie. Vir die sprekers wat, desondanks die tweetalige taalsituasie, nie kan ooreenkom oor watter taal die hoë-funksie taal en watter taal die lae-funksie taal is nie, bestaan daar 'n tweetalige taalsituasie sonder die voorkoms van diglossie’.

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While some may argue that the former situation no longer exists in South Africa, the latter referred to by Van Rensburg is certainly the more common in South Africa these days. Baetens Beardsmore (1982: 5) calls this form of bilingualism ‘horizontal bilingualism’.

What exactly constitutes bilingualism is difficult to define because of the wide variance of competence displayed by speakers in the second language and the impossibility of measuring it. Baetens Beardsmore (1982: 3) maintains that ‘the field of investigation is evident but not as precise as one might wish’.

Van Wyk (1978: 39), in his description of language contact and bilingualism in South Africa, concludes that all attempts to assess the degree of one's bilingualism have been futile. He also looks at the distinction made between natural and artificial bilingualism: the former ‘is acquired in a spontaneous and unplanned fashion’, whereas the latter ‘is the result of deliberate and systematic teaching’ (p. 37). It is obvious that the processes of acquisition which underlie this difference are not mutually exclusive but may supplement and reinforce one another. Later he adds:

‘It is evident from what has been said that early natural acquisition of a second language is not general in South Africa. Late natural acquisition occurs more frequently and artificial acquisition is quite general. This pattern of acquisition has its effects on the degree of bilingualism attained by South Africans.’ (p. 39)

The combination of late natural acquisition - these days with TV and increased integration and intermarriage of Afrikaners and English in an urban environment it is going to come earlier than was the case in the past - and the artificial acquisition the child is confronted with from the first year of primary school through to matric, must put Afrikaans children, as well as more and more English children too probably, in a unique position to achieve a degree of bilingualism on a broad scale that can only be envied by other societies where two or more languages function side by side. The Flemish situation, for example, differs markedly from South Africa in this regard: nowadays young Flemings are most likely to be more proficient in English than in French by the time they leave school.

Mackey (1972: 554) maintains of bilingualism that ‘It does not belong to the domain of “langue” but of “parole”’. He goes on to say that ‘It is impossible not to confuse bilingualism - the use of two or more languages by the individual - with the more general concept of language contact, which deals with the direct or indirect influence of one language on another resulting in changes in “langue” which become the permanent property of

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monolinguals and enter into the historical development of the language.’ Mackey is talking in general terms here but his comments apply absolutely to the South African situation if one subscribes to the theory that English influence on Afrikaans has now reached the stage of instigating quite deep-rooted language change. (cf. 4.5) The discrepancy between competence and performance that exists even in monolinguals is greater still in the case of bilingual individuals, particularly in speakers who are bilingual to the degree that most Afrikaners are. For many Afrikaners English and Afrikaans have become to a certain extent indivisible: they require their intimate knowledge of English in order to be completely articulate in their mother tongue. English words, and particularly English phrases and idioms, have important functions in certain subject areas. (cf. Combrink 1984: 98 point i for example) Particularly the informal register of even educated Afrikaners is laced with English. Nowadays one continually hears reference to so-called studentetaal (= slang of a particular group, i.e. groeptaal, cf. footnote p. 65), which is nearly always regarded as something negative by those who comment on it, whereas it is in fact the inevitable product of a bilingual society and above all of South African society where the vaktaalburos, for example, have coined a vast amount of artificial terminology, particularly for higher social functions, and these efforts have not been entirely without some success. There will always be a discrepancy between the theory and the practice of linguistic purism, even among the upper echelons, as the language of tertiary students indicates, but further down the social ladder the success is going to be still more restricted due to the undeveloped linguistic sensitivity of such people because of their lack of eloquence and above all because of their indifference to the language they use. Finally, with regard to studentetaal, I think it is correct to say that many modern young Afrikaners feel comfortable with their bilingualism and that this is reflected in the ease with which they slip from one language into the other, with or without a degree of interference occurring.

The intimate acquaintance Afrikaners have of English is very well illustrated by the following anecdote of Smith's (1962: 41) where he is discussing the occurrence of the English swearword ‘bloody’ in Afrikaans:

‘Dat die woord egter taamlik algemeen aan Afrikaners bekend is, blyk uit die feit dat by 'n sekere koncert [sic!] onlangs die gehoor aan 't lag gegaan het toe 'n sanger doodernstig en baie duidelik die woorde “diep lê die dou” uitgespreek het.’ (Originally appeared in a column in Die Suiderstem between 1936-39.)

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In the same book (p. 59-60) Smith discusses the difficulty of getting Afrikaners to accept verafrikaansing of the spelling of English loanwords e.g. hendikep, tenk, trem, sleng:

‘Die feit is dat die meerderheid van beskaafde Afrikaners oor die hele land in hierdie woorde nog wel deeglik die Engelse a soos in Engels man uitspreek, en dat dié uitspraak met e vir hulle hinderlik is.’ (p. 60)

Further on, on page 64, where he is discussing the verafrikaansing of international vocabulary, he states:

‘In ons schryftaal word die reël dan ook vrywel algemeen toegepas. Maar in ons spreektaal hoor ons nog elke dag die Engelse uitspraak van woorde soos pedaal, paraffin, vaseline, taxi, kondukteur, en honderde ander. En hoeveel van ons gebruik nie die Engelse klem in artillerie, cypres, grammofoon, kongres, telefoon, telegraaf en telegram nie?’

All these examples of Smith's simply substantiate the degree of indivisibility of the two languages in the minds of many Afrikaners, plus the fact that English is most certainly a second language to Afrikaners and not a foreign language; in my opinion one could not find a better illustration of the distinction between the two.

The taalgevoel of the Afrikaner has now been affected by his knowledge of English to such an extent ‘dat intuïsie in verband met die moedertaal nie genoegsame leiding gee nie, o.m. omdat die ideale eentalige moedertaalspreker in ons gesofistikeerde wêreld nie bestaan nie (seer sekerlik nie in die Afrikaanse spraakgemeenskap nie).’ (Odendal 1978: 70) Aitchison (1981: 52) uses the term ‘language fuzziness’ to describe the phenomenon of native-speakers feeling that something doesn't quite sound right but not knowing why. The term can be quite appropriately applied to the dilemma the bilingual Afrikaner so often finds himself in: the situation where, as Odendal puts it, his intuition lets him down. Later in her book, Aitchison (1981: 176) states that why linguistic change was not observed by earlier writers is because they ‘intentionally ignored fluctuation and fuzziness, and in so doing, eliminated from their grammars all symptoms of ongoing language change.’ Thus this wavering taalgevoel, unreliable intuition or linguistic fuzziness perhaps deserves to be taken more seriously in South Africa and should not be swept under the carpet as merely wrong and of no further consequence.

There is a tendency among bilinguals to reduce the number of differences between the two languages, what Grüner (1980: 5) calls reduksie-

[p. 42]

interferensie. Vildomec (1963: 173) describes the phenomenon as follows:

‘Many phenomena of the mutual interference of languages may be reduced to one single rule or law: a tendency to save efforts.’

One reduces the effort by reducing the number of distinctions between the two languages and thus increases the efficiency:

‘... the bilingual realises an extraordinary saving in storage. He no longer has to keep track of the constraints of two linguistic systems.’ (Martinet 1952: 26)

Efficiency in communication, and not purity of the medium of that communication, is the main concern of the average speaker. Retaining distinctions where they can be eradicated, puts a burden on the memory; eradicating them, particularly in such closely related languages as English and Afrikaans, comes easily.

Afrikaners are often as well acquainted, sometimes even better acquainted, with English idiom than with their own, for their high degree of bilingualism has now reached a stage where they are often unaware of the difference. Langenhoven (1935: 101-2) wrote something to this effect as early as 1935 - how much more must it be the case now, fifty odd years later?:

‘Deurdat Engels vir ons so bekend is dat ons hom nie meer as 'n vreemde taal voel nie, kom baie Engelse idiome ons nie as eienaardige Engelse vorms van spreekwyse voor nie maar as gewone taalvorms, en dan dra ons hulle letterlik oor sonder om bewus te wees van wat ons doen. Dis dan eintlik nie 'n sonde van onkunde nie maar van te veel kennis.’

Knowing two languages, which sometimes categorise differently, the awareness of categories and distinctions in one language gives rise to a need in the other to be able to categorise in a similar fashion there and make similar distinctions. This ‘need’ is not felt by monolingual speakers - a category which no longer exists among Afrikaners - and thus they cope with what they have at their disposal. The bilingual individual could too, but prefers not to: he has greater semantic demands which his bilingualism both causes and satisfies. Langenhoven (1935: 102) provides a good concrete example of this need: in discussing the use of maak as an auxiliary, he gives an example and goes on to comment on it:

[p. 43]

‘As hy dit nie wil doen nie sal ek hom dit maak doen. Om te sê “ek sal hom dit laat doen” of “ek sal hom dwing om dit te doen” druk nie uit wat ons wil sê nie.’

But the Dutch cope admirably without resorting to maken and are unaware of any semantic shortcoming in their language. Mansvelt (1884: 180) provides an even better example, in reverse, of acquaintance with a concept in one language leading to feeling the need for an equivalent in another language. He was a native-speaker of Dutch - admittedly greatly prejudiced against Afrikaans - and was not convinced that the ‘primitive’ verbal system of Cape Dutch, with no imperfect or pluperfect tenses, permitted conversation on a higher plane. We know of course that the verbal system of Afrikaans, greatly simplified as it is compared to that of Dutch and English, is no impediment to understanding at all. Mansvelt simply felt a need that he was unable to fulfil in Afrikaans because of his awareness of the category in his mother tongue. Le Roux (1952: 26-27) sums this situation up very nicely:

‘Ook gebeur dit dikwels dat onderskeidinge in die een taal gemaak word wat nie gebruiklik is in die ander taal nie. Om dieselfde onderskeiding in die ander taal te kan maak, word dit dan soms nodig om omslagtige omskrywinge te gebruik, maar die behoefte aan so 'n onderskeiding word eers gevoel deur bekendheid met die eerste taal.’

The reverse can also be the case, however, and here we have to do with another form of reduction interference. It is not uncommon for English to have one word for a concept where Dutch and Afrikaans have two because they perceive a certain semantic distinction which the English either do not see or do not consider worthy of making, for example: English has only one word for ‘sign’ while Dutch and Afrikaans have two, bord and teken. These two are not at all synonymous in Dutch but the distinction between them has become blurred in certain contexts in Afrikaans. There are many such examples of semantic distinction no longer being made in Afrikaans because, I would postulate, no such distinction exists in English. This is the reverse phenomenon to the ‘need syndrome’ discussed earlier. (cf. synonymous couplets, 7.15)

It was noted by Uijlings (1956: 77) that bilingualism ‘leads to uncertainty in speech. It is this hesitation which often leads to hypercorrect forms...’ The concept of hypercorrection as such is discussed under 5.3. An inferiority complex in linguistic matters is not uncommon among Afrikaners and has been greatly contributed to by the irresponsible and uninformed prescriptions dished up to them by ignorant schoolteachers. In the days before the official recognition of Afrikaans, when Afrikaners were

[p. 44]

required to write Dutch when putting pen to paper, the situation must have been even worse than now, but then the cause of their linguistic insecurity was different. Lodewyckx (1911: 103), a Fleming who spent some time in the Cape early in the century, made the following observation at the time:

‘Toch kan moeilik ontkend worden, dat het feit van een zeer gebrekkig Afrikaansch te spreken, doorspekt met Engelsche woorden en wendingen, voor vele Boeren eene oorzaak van ondergeschiktheid is. Deze ondergeschiktheid voelen zij zelf, evengoed tegenover Nederlanders uit Europa als tegenover Engelschen.’

1925 did little to halt the inroads English was making, however. Firstly, cutting ties with the language of Holland removed the only means by which one could monitor and correct one's taalgebruik and secondly, recognition of Afrikaans in lieu of Dutch coincided with the increased urbanisation of the Afrikaner. Pienaar (1931: 181), writing at this time, commented:

‘En nou dat Afrikaans reeds op skool en universiteit die aandag en studie erlang wat dit so lank moes ontbeer het, kan 'n mens verwag dat dit ook nie meer as beslis noodsaaklik (as gevolg van die tweetalige kultuur) 'n verdere vervorming onder die invloed van Engels sal ondergaan nie’. (first published in 1919)

He could not have been more wrong. Undoubtedly he and his contemporaries saw the official recognition of Afrikaans as a great improvement on the situation as it had been, but new dangers lay ahead in the form of continued and increased urbanisation and better education, and thus greater acquaintance with English, i.e. die vertweetaliging van alle Afrikaners. In the course of time no corner of the country would remain isolated from English influence.

After discussing a trilingual situation in India, where the three languages concerned have been in contact for more than 600 years, Aitchison (1981: 119) maintains that that situation ‘illustrates the fact that with enough time and enough contact, there is no limit to the extent to which languages can affect one another’.

Although Afrikaners go to separate schools, universities and churches and have Afrikaans speaking equivalents of the Boy Scouts, Rotary, Freemasons etc., the degree of integration of the two communities has now reached a point where a blend is an inevitable result, and the drift is

[p. 45]

unavoidably more in the one direction than the other. The following statement by Suffeleers (1979: 175), in which he is in fact referring to the situation in Flanders where there is strict geographic separation of the two language communities, unlike in South Africa, is all the more valid in the case of Afrikaans and English:

‘In directe en indirecte contactsituaties blijken talen invloed op elkaar uit te oefenen doordat de taalgebruikers elementen uit de ene taal - vooral uit het vocabulaire - overnemen als ze de andere taal gebruiken. Dit universele verschijnsel van de interferentie is in Vlaanderen evenwel niet het gevolg van taalcontact zonder meer, maar - ruimer nog - van cultuurcontact.’

2.1.3 The linguistic diffusion as a result of cultural assimilation in South Africa

That cultural diffusion inevitably leads to linguistic diffusion is a well-known fact. Grosjean (1982: 157) makes the point, however, that biculturalism and bilingualism do not necessarily go hand in hand - one can be bilingual and yet monocultural, as is the case with many Blacks in South Africa, for example. But this cannot be said of the Afrikaner. The differences between English and Afrikaans culture are nowadays too minimal to call the Afrikaner bicultural - his culture is a blend of the two and thus he too is monocultural, but in a different sense from that intended by Grosjean. Nevertheless the Afrikaner often believes, or chooses to believe, that he has a culture which is intrinsically different from that of his English speaking compatriots. Barnouw (1934: 40) made the following, now famous observation of Afrikaans culture:

‘The effect of this anglicising process is a strange anomaly, of which the Afrikaners themselves are apparently unaware. Their outlook on life, their conceptions of the world abroad, their methods of Government and business administration, their ideas of sportmanship, even their manners and forms of social intercourse, bear the trade-mark Made in England. A foreign observer will notice this similarity more easily than an Afrikaner, who intent on being and proving himself to be un-English, is more keenly aware of the little differences that mark his Afrikaans individuality.’

Boshoff (1963: 65) also quoted this passage from Barnouw and added the following futile comment:

[p. 46]

‘Mense wat aan ons taal wil dokter solank dit die toestand is, het geen werklikheidsin nie: hulle span die kar voor die perde.’

Boshoff would have done well to heed the words of De Vooys (1925: 4-5):

‘De taal is de spiegel der kultuur... De vreemde woorden zijn geen lastige indringers, maar onmisbare en dus welkome gasten... Die menging van vreemde bestanddelen als begeleidingsverschijnsel van diepgaande [culturele] invloed kan dus op zichzelf moeielik [sic!] als een bederf, een ontaarding beschouwd worden.’

In an earlier work in which he discusses anglicisms in Dutch, De Vooys (1914: 124) stated:

‘De onderzoeker van het Anglicisme moet meer doen dan Engelse woorden verzamelen en alfabeties ordenen: hij moet in dit dode materiaal leven brengen door er een stuk kultuurgeschiedenis van te maken.’

But his task was easier than mine. The contact between English and Dutch has not been nearly as intimate as that between English and Afrikaans, not only because of a wider geographical and cultural gap, but because Dutch bilingualism, admirable as it is, cannot be compared with that of the Afrikaner - to a Dutchman English is a foreign language, to an Afrikaner a second language. Consequently the influence goes way beyond the realm of vocabulary, which is all De Vooys is referring to. Previous studies, in particular Rousseau's, have looked extensively at the cultural areas from which words have been borrowed into Afrikaans from English. It is therefore unlikely that I can shed any new light on that aspect of the influence of English on Afrikaans and I thus do not intend to linger on it.

Afrikaans has been referred to as the vertaaltaal by uitnemendheid (Du Toit 1965: 125), particularly at an official level, despite the fact that the majority of bureaucrats are Afrikaners. But even at the colloquial level it often applies. In this respect Afrikaans suffers from the same disease as Dutch in Belgium, but there at least many of the bureaucrats involved in the process are French speaking. That public notices in Natal often betray the fact that they have clearly been compiled in English first and then translated, is not altogether surprising in that province, but why the same should be the case on municipal signs in Bloemfontein and Pretoria, for example, is somewhat curious. According to Combrink (1967: 68)

[p. 47]

‘omtrent 90% van alle Afrikaanse advertensies word in Engels geskep en die Afrikaanse ekwivalent word agterna gemaak.’¹

All this would seem to indicate that the native tongue of the compilers is only part of the explanation - the sphere in question would also seem to be a contributing factor even when the task is being performed by Afrikaners. It is claimed by some that the ability of Afrikaans to compete on an equal level with English in all spheres of society is dependent on its ability to satisfy the vertaalbaarheidseis put on it. Boshoff (1964: 38) complained that ‘Solank die taal van ons wetgewende, regsplegende, onderwysende, sportliefhebbende, handeldrywende, nywerheidondernemende en vaktaalmakende liggame nie meer aandag geniet nie, sal Engelse invloed 'n toenemende rol speel.’ This complaint is probably less valid now than in 1964 but if that is the case, it is because of the success the language has had in meeting the demands of translatability, partially thanks to the efforts of the various vaktaalburos. Even Dutch in Belgium, despite being able to look north for guidance, resorts to loans and loan translations for technical terminology, as Suffeleers (1979: 193) explains, because of the Flemings' intimacy with French:

‘Waar de moedertaal wegens de discontinuïteit ten aanzien van de noordelijke cultuurtaal niet toereikend blijkt te zijn, valt men, overnemend of vertalend, op de “vertrouwde” Franse terminologie terug.’

Combrink (1968: 8) feels there is only one means of survival for Afrikaans, given the odds it is up against:

‘Daar moet ook deeglik besef word dat Suid-Afrikaanse Engels onuitputtelike voedingsbronne het, nl. die Engels van Engeland, die VSA, Kanada, Australië en Nieu-Seeland. Afrikaans het daarenteen hoegenaamd geen standhoudende voedingsbron behalwe die skeppingskrag en die trotse gees van sommige van sy sprekers nie.’

Le Roux (1952: 10) on the other hand, sees another device at the disposal of Afrikaans in this respect:

‘Ook voel die volk aan dat, hoewel Afrikaans sy eie norm geword het, dit nie beteken dat alle bande met die verlede verbreek moet word nie. Hy voel dus dat ons geregtig is op die hele Nederlandse woordeskat - al verwerp ons dele daarvan -

1 Odendal (1984: 197) deals with the dominant role of English in television advertising and complains that the problem is not just one of translation but also of of conception.

[p. 48]

en dat, wanneer nuwe behoeftes ontstaan, dit die natuurlike bron is waaruit ons moet put, indien nodig.’

The Taalkommissie does, as I understand it, take Dutch usage into consideration when deliberating on issues, but the common man, the everyday user of Afrikaans, is nowadays both unaware of, and disinterested in, what the Dutch say - Dutch is a foreign language to him and of no relevance to his South African circumstances. Le Roux's remark is valid enough in theory, as is Combrink's, but I feel practice is proving to be otherwise - translation is the main means by which Afrikaans is combating the threat and meeting the challenge, at least at an official level, although less so at the level of the spoken word.

English is, and will remain, the language of the majority in the private sector of commerce, as well as the language through which contact with a wider world is maintained and in that wider world English has become what Latin was to the Roman world.

Scholtz (1940: 143), writing in 1940, was correct in my opinion in seeing bilingualism itself, not just the co-existence of the two languages in the country, as a cause of concern:

‘Tweetaligheid sowel as die ekonomiese, staatkundige, letterkundige en kulturele bande tussen Suid-Afrika en Engeland maak die verengelsing van Afrikaans nie 'n hersenskim nie, maar 'n steeds dreigende gevaar.’

The political connections he refers to may well be different now, but his point still retains a certain validity, even if America has now replaced England in importance on the world stage. The Afrikaner's need to be bilingual in all spheres of life has led to new needs in his language and thus new demands being put on it. These have been largely met by translation, whether officially or otherwise. And if bilingualism inevitably brings with it a host of Bedürfnislehnwörter, it is also accompanied by many Luxuslehnwörter that the purists may well oppose, but usually with little success.² On the cultural assimilation that has accompanied the growing bilingualism of the Afrikaner since his shift to the cities, Barnouw (1934: 41-42) suggested the following hypothesis:

‘It is perhaps a subconscious awareness of this assimilation that makes the Afrikaners so aggressively anti-British. If you feel yourself becoming what you do not want to be, you are apt to overemphasize your otherness. And they who are consciously aware of the danger are the most active protestants

2 These terms were first used by Tappolet (1914).

[p. 49]

of the intrinsic difference between Boer and Briton. That explains why racial animosity runs highest in South African centres of learning. The intellectuals feel themselves the guardians of the racial inheritance. The Taal cult is their trust...’

- even if academics and their speech are not typical of the population as a whole. I like to see this statement of Barnouw's in connection with the following catch-cry of the nineteenth century Flemish activist Hugo Verriest: De taal is gans het volk. This is so often quoted by Afrikaners but it has a validity in South Africa beyond the realisation of those who cite it: the amount of English that has been absorbed into Afrikaans and has become part and parcel of it, reflects perfectly the blended culture which Afrikaners and English now share:

‘...the differences which stamp them Britons and Afrikaners are outweighed by the similarities by virtue of which they are all South Africans.’ (Barnouw 1934: 51)

The linguistic assimilation which was going hand in hand with cultural assimilation in South Africa was put in the following terms by a Dutch subscriber to Die Huisgenoot who was living in Cape Town in 1935:

‘Maar hoe sou 'n mens anders kon verwag? Nederlands word lankal nie meer as taal onderwys nie; die grense tussen Engels en Hollands, in woordeskat en veral idioom, word onseker. En die slordige Afrikaans van ons groot kleurlingbevolking vir wie geen skoolmediumkwessie of liefde vir hul taal skyn te bestaan nie, werk daaraan mee... In Londen of Nu-York is dit baie makliker vir Nederlanders om hul taal suiwer te hou as hier, waar 'n mens in die omgangstaal soveel Engelse woorde en idiooms hoor en, veral met die werkmense, moet gebruik om verstaan te word. In ons onderbewussyn lê die mooi masjinerie van ons taalgebruik. Dit het vrywel afsonderlike taaldrade vir die afsonderlike taal, dog by Afrikaans loop die Engelse en Hollandse drade herhaaldelik na mekaar toe.’ (31/5/35)

This is in fact an early observation by a layman of a process which is now recognised as integral to all bilingual situations. Weinreich, Labov and Herzog (1968: 188) sum up the process as follows:

‘Linguistic and social factors are closely interrelated in the development of language change. Explanations which are confined to one or other aspect, no matter how well constructed,

[p. 50]

will fail to account for the rich body of regularities that can be observed in empirical studies of language behaviour.’

2.1.4 The inherent affinity of the two languages

The inherent affinity which English and Afrikaans share is of two kinds:

a)	their common Germanic background
b)	parallel analytical development.

a) The first affinity factor is one that is also shared by Dutch, both Dutch and English stemming from very closely related Low German dialects which established themselves in their respective areas during the period of the Great Migrations. Therefore, the ‘degree of facilitating kinship’ (Whitney, 1881: 10) that exists between English and Afrikaans has made the ground fertile from the outset for interference to occur. Van Wyk (1978: 50) lends weight to the importance of this factor when he quotes the reverse situation being the case in Bantu languages; despite the head-on collision these languages have experienced with those of the White community, ‘Afrikaans and English influence on Bantu syntax and pronunciation is practically nil, obviously because of the considerable structural differences between the two groups of languages.’

b) The second affinity factor is one that is not shared by Dutch to the same degree. Although even Dutch is decidedly more analytical and less dependent on inflection than German, for example, English and Afrikaans have progressed much further along the path from synthesis to analysis. The following are examples of this parallel analytical development in English and Afrikaans: loss of adjectival inflections (only partially so in Afrikaans), loss of gender, loss of feminine endings from nomina agentis (still optional in Afrikaans but generally speaking compulsory in Dutch), generalisation of s plurals (often still alternating with e plurals in Afrikaans), generalisation of hê as the auxiliary in perfect tenses, simplification of conjugations to the point where conjugated forms and the infinitive have fallen together (almost the case in English with the exception of the third person singular) and finally, and most importantly in the context of this book, loss of all formal distinction between nouns and verbs, thus facilitating change of function. (cf. 7.16) As has been mentioned before (p. 25), Du Toit (1897:iv) and Valkhoff (1972: 29) wrongly attributed such similarities between English and Afrikaans to influence of the former on the latter. Langenhoven (1926: 114-115) had realised already in the 1890's that these similarities were not the result of interference and appealed to the analytical congruency between the two languages in his efforts to support the movement for the recognition of Afrikaans and the abolition of Dutch as a national language:

[p. 51]

‘Now as to grammar, Africander Dutch certainly resembles English much more than Dutch. It has dropped all unnecessary inflections, and anyone who will take the trouble of carefully analysing the characteristics of the three languages, will observe the similarity in grammatical structure between English and Africander Dutch, and the dissimilarity of these two to Dutch.’ (written in 1893)

The common Germanic background of English and Afrikaans implies among other things similar stress patterns, given that one of the characteristics of Germanic languages is stress on the first syllable, except in the case of certain derivatives (e.g. verstaan, begryp, kinderagtig, etc.). But whereas indigenous vocabulary in the two languages takes the stress on the first syllable, the large body of Norman French vocabulary in English and of Latin and Greek derived words in both English and Afrikaans, as well as the many French loanwords in Dutch/Afrikaans, usually require a stress not found in indigenous words. But as such words have become assimilated into English, the stress has shifted in many cases to the first syllable, e.g. chauffeur, bureau. The often criticised tendency in Afrikaans to stress bisyllabic words such as kontak, konflik and aspek on the first syllable as well as polysyllabic nouns such as mikrofoon, minister and telegram, although generally accepted as English inspired, is therefore not in fact foreign to the established stress pattern of Afrikaans. In this regard, what is occurring with these words is comparable to the process to which chauffeur and bureau have already fallen victim in English. De Bruto (1970: 42) had the following to say on this issue in Afrikaans:

‘Om die vreemde Franse (Romaanse) klempatroon te verkies bo dit wat heeltemal in die Afrikaanse patroon val, maar wat daarom juis nader aan Engels staan, maak dit 'n arbitrêre keuse. Linguistics sal hoogstens, binne 'n groot vergelykingsraamwerk, gesê kan word dat die Afrikaanse patroon net verhaas kan gewees het deur Engelse beïnvloeding en dat om subjektiewe taalpolitieke redes, hier dus ook sprake van Anglisismes is.’

De Villiers (1970: 249) provides quite a convincing argument to support the theory that pronunciations such as fedderaal and kollenel, instead of feederaal and koolonel (i.e. with a short vowel in an open syllable) are also as natural to Afrikaans as they are to English, without English having mediated in any way.

At this point the concepts of pseudo-anglicisms (skyn-Anglisismes) and contributing factors (versterkende faktore), both of which are dealt with

[p. 52]

in detail under 6.00, should be mentioned. The difficulty of identifying English influence on Afrikaans, formidable anyway because of the large number of factors that possibly shaped the language in the pre-literary period, is all the greater in the case of two languages which are historically so closely related. The common genetic material that English, Dutch and Afrikaans have inherited, according to the laws of natural selection, from their Low German ancestors can have led to certain phenomena having been retained in English and Afrikaans while they are not, or are no longer, attested in standard Dutch or even in twentieth century dialects. Such phenomena, if they can be isolated, are termed skyn-Anglisismes in the Afrikaans literature on the topic. On the other hand, it is possible that Dutch has or had two structures, one of which is shared by English. The fact that the structure which resembles the English one has become the more common or even the only one in Afrikaans, while (now) being absent from Dutch or at least uncommon in that language, may conceal a further refinement of the concept of pseudo-anglicisms. In this instance one can say that the occurrence of the phenomenon in Afrikaans is not in itself due to English, but that the contact with English has contributed to, or even been the main cause, in that item having been retained in Afrikaans while dying out in Dutch, or in its having acquired the frequency it has in Afrikaans compared to its frequency in Dutch. A common concrete example of this concept could well be the frequently quoted case of braaf, usually meaning ‘brave’ in Afrikaans, while in Dutch it can only mean ‘well-behaved’ but apparently previously meant ‘brave’ (cf. p. 131). It is usually impossible to be categorical in such cases and one must often resort to possibility and probability theories instead of exact theories.

It is obvious that when two languages have so much in common as English and Afrikaans because of common ancestry and subsequent parallel development, the ground is all the more fertile for cross pollination to occur than where this is not the case. In this respect the English-Afrikaans contact situation is unique in the modern world, at least as far as European languages in contact are concerned.

Examples of kinship facilitating the synthesis of forms can be found in the realms of both phonology and morphology. When words such as donkie, lorrie and storie were adopted, they contained no phoneme which was foreign to Afrikaans; with a minimum of adaption in spelling they even looked like Afrikaans words. The [i] ending, whether a diminutive by origin in English or not - which is certainly the case in a word like auntie - could be immediately perceived as such in Afrikaans where there is a great wealth of such endings. The assimilation process was then complete - phonologically, morphologically and even semantically - and at the cost of negligible adaption. As Schonken (1914: 192) remarked:

[p. 53]

‘Maakt echter reeds de overeenkomst in woordenschat en armoede der verbuigingsvormen de overname makkelijk, zoo wordt de overgang nog in de hand gewerkt door opvallende overeenstemming in uitspraak en klankstelsel.’

When the words bottel³ and stoor were borrowed - one assumes as nouns in the first instance - they were immediately also able to do service as verbs, as well as form a compound noun, bottelstoor, with no necessity for medial vowels or any other form of adaption, other than spelling, to imitate the English ‘bottlestore’. It is of no relevance in this context that puristic endeavour seems to have had some success in replacing bottelstoor with drankwinkel.

Cognate vocabulary in English and Afrikaans can be totally homophonous, even if semantic distinctions exist. The English verb ‘to pool’ is phonologically identical to an Afrikaans word (poel) with a totally different meaning. Firstly, because of the Afrikaner's acquaintance with the English meaning of the word and secondly, because he apparently feels there is not a direct equivalent in his language (i.e. the need theory), and thirdly, because the English word can so easily be assimilated in an Afrikaans sentence, it commonly occurs as a verb in the English sense in Afrikaans - HAT recognises the noun poel in this sense as an anglicism, but not the verb. Because of the close relationship of the two languages and because bilingualism is perhaps subconsciously overlapping in the mind of the speaker, it can be impossible in such a case to ascertain whether poel as a verb in Afrikaans represents a loanword or a loan meaning being applied to an indigenous word.

Closely related but not identical idiom in English and Dutch has often led to expressions in Afrikaans being truer to the English form than the Dutch, particularly as the affinity of the two languages often puts no formal constraints on such contamination taking place, for example: 'n naald in 'n hooimied soek (Dutch says speld), die handdoek ingooi (Dutch says de handdoek in de ring gooien). (cf. p. 180) Dutch and Afrikaans have the expression overhandigen/oorhandig where English has ‘to hand over’, but English also has the expression ‘to hand in’, which is unknown in Dutch but occurs as inhandig in Afrikaans. There is no obvious sign of foreignness in this word to the native-speaker and it has consequently been absorbed with ease. (HAT regards it as an anglicism) That it may be non-indigenous by origin and that it may have ousted an indigenous expression in the process of adoption, is of no concern to the average native-speaker.

3 It has been claimed that bottel is of Portuguese origin in Afrikaans, (cf. Boshoff and Nienaber 1967: 182) Even if this is so, Portuguese can presumably only account for the occurrence of bottel as a noun in Afrikaans, not as a verb.

[p. 54]

Further examples of idiom overlap because of phonological similarity with English are provided by iets met 'n greintjie sout neem, where Dutch uses korreltje, and 'n string kwalifikasies, where streng cannot be used figuratively in this sense in Dutch. The latter example is interesting in another respect, however. In Germanic dialects e and i often alternate, as the following triplets illustrate: Eng. bring, Afr. bring, Dt. brengen; Eng. think, Afr. dink, Dt. denken. Afrikaans, like English, has on occasions ultimately opted for i. This parallel phonological development has created in string a homophone in both languages, possibly further contributing to its susceptibility to assume an English meaning as in the example given above.

The occurrence in both South African English and Afrikaans of [ə] in stressed syllables such as this/dit is a further (chance?) parallel which I do not feel qualified to comment on. Suffice it to say that the sound is also prevalent in New Zealand - in Australia it has become a shibboleth by which one can pick a Kiwi. Does this indicate that the sound has its origins in English dialect? If this is the case in South African English too, is the presence of the sound in Afrikaans the result of English influence, because it is unknown in Dutch to my knowledge? This would seem unlikely on the other hand, because, as will be discussed later (cf. 7.18), English has had very little effect on Afrikaans phonology; one would be more inclined in this context to presume that stressed [ə] in South African English is the result of the contact with Afrikaans. Or has the sound arisen spontaneously in both, or just in Afrikaans, with an influence one way or the other having played no role at all? I offer no solution here but simply mention the matter as yet another example of the confusion which the close affinity of English and Afrikaans confronts the researcher with.

The many inherent similarities between English and Afrikaans, while facilitating the inroads the former is making into the latter, are also partly to blame for the linguistic insecurity that many Afrikaners experience and can cause legitimate Afrikaans expressions and words to be avoided. Of course there are the many international words that are immediately suspect to many Afrikaners, but as De Villiers points out, this attitude can have repercussions for indigenous structures too. He maintains that ek kan hom nie uitstaan nie is avoided because ek kan hom nie staan nie is a known anglicism and uitstaande skulde is avoided because of uitstaande speler being frowned upon. (Die Huisgenoot, 18/11/49) Either the English inspired examples arise in Afrikaans because of a certain similarity to like sounding expressions in that language or alternatively, having arisen, are consciously avoided by linguistically aware speakers who then overextend their awareness to a point where they eradicate acceptable, uncontaminated material from their speech.