The Influence of English on Afrikaans

[p. 85]

Chapter Three

3.0 Previous works on anglicisms

Much if not most of what has been written on anglicisms in Afrikaans and which I have had to read as secondary literature, has been written if not by the layman, then at least for the layman; it is after all a topic which should be of importance to people at all levels of the social hierarchy in the opinion of Afrikaans academics. These scholars, in being forced to address the layman if their appeals are to meet with any success in practice at all, have often resorted to a passionate style and language, as well as having to state ad infinitum what to the trained linguist is blatantly obvious, for example that even English has borrowed many words from Latin and Greek and continues to. Also the strongly prescriptive nature of virtually everything written on the topic has tended to blur the objectivity of the writers concerned, particularly in older works. Nevertheless, even antiquated prescriptive works cannot be ignored because of the diachronic perspective they provide the linguist with. Scientific or not, they include anglicisms which either still exist, and thus one gets some idea of how long they have been present in Afrikaans and therefore whether they haven't meanwhile earned acceptance, or else they deal with anglicisms which have since disappeared altogether or have decreased in frequency, which sheds some light on the success that puristic endeavours have had to date. (cf. 5.2) With the wisdom of hindsight, by looking back on what has been written on anglicisms since the first half of the nineteenth century, we are now in a position to recognise as ingeburger, and thus as having led to linguistic change, phenomena which the scholars of the time could only perceive as interference or possibly inburgering in progress; they commented on the process whereas we can now observe the result.

The opinions on anglicisms that have appeared in print are as numerous as the theories on the origins of Afrikaans although, unlike that topic, there have been no substantial monographs written on anglicisms with the exception of Rousseau's (1937). Combrink (1978: 90) lists only the following as the main monographs on the topic: Rousseau (1937), Le Roux (1952), Van der Merwe (1968), Combrink (1968), Terblanche (1972). If Combrink were to write that article today he would undoubtedly also add his own recent contribution (1984). It should be pointed out, however, that Le Roux (1952) is not a monograph in the true sense as it is in fact a later reprint of several articles that appeared in Die Huisgenoot in 1945; Van der Merwe (1967) is a monograph of which only a very small proportion is devoted to anglicisms; and Combrink (1968) is only a 32-paged booklet.

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Combrink (1978) does not mention any other pre-war works on anglicisms, probably because he regards them as too antiquated to be of any practical use now. Nevertheless, for the purposes of this chapter, Changuion (1844) and Mansvelt (1884) cannot be ignored because of their historical significance and the Twee Oud-onderwysers (1937) should not be overlooked either, as approximately half of this monograph deals with Engelse goggas and, as it appeared in the same year as Rousseau's thesis, is interesting to compare with that work. De Bruto (1970: 39) considered it worthy of mention when he listed the main works on anglicisms.

Although numerous Afrikaans grammars devote a certain amount of space to anglicisms, each often with its own individual list of ‘acceptable’ and/or ‘unacceptable’ examples of English influence, I intend to deal with only a few better known works as an illustration of the sort of treatment the issue has received in textbooks destined for secondary and tertiary students.

Another common denominator between the many writings on anglicisms and those on the origins of Afrikaans is the amount of nonsense that has appeared in print; in this respect one immediately thinks of Valkhoff's (1966, 1972) and, with hindsight, Hesseling's (1899) books on the origins of Afrikaans. But works on anglicisms must take the cake when it comes to quantity. I presume the reason for this is that too many people have regarded simply being an educated, language conscious native-speaker of Afrikaans as sufficient qualification to comment on what is or is not an anglicism in their language and what they personally regard as acceptable or not. The origin of Afrikaans, on the other hand, is a topic which the layman or average schoolteacher, however taalbewus he may be, is simply not in a position to comment on without a thorough linguistic training.