The Influence of English on Afrikaans

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5.4 Forms of purism

In all language communities where purism plays a role, excesses are likely to be committed which then bring the whole movement into disrepute. Somehow a middle road has to be found between the desire to maintain a certain purity (often a purity which wasn't even there in Dutch to begin with) and the need to be non-isolationist, practical and take common usage into account. A language is after all merely a code which can only function efficiently if all its speakers are in general agreement as to which verbal symbols are used and what they signify.

A joke is told in South Africa which goes as follows:

‘Hoekom roer die Brit sy tee links om en die Boer syne regs om? - Om dit soet te kry.’

At times one can't help feeling that certain puristic trends have no more point than this joke, i.e. that they are based on a belief that to preserve one's identity one must not only retain the traditional differences, but even create new ones. Attitudes to spelling are an example of this. Renkema (1984: 114) relates the following anecdote with regard to Dutch spelling in Holland and Belgium:

‘Toen de commissie van Belgische en Nederlandse deskundigen in de jaren na de oorlog aan het werk ging, bleek al spoedig dat de discussie over c of k sterk emotioneel gekleurd was. Vele Nederlanders hadden in de jaren '40-'45 een hekel gekregen aan de k van de Deutsche Kulturkammer. Geef ons maar de c, zei men in het Noorden. Nee, volstrekt niet, zeiden de Vlamingen, die c is ons veel te Frans. Juist door de taal moeten wij laten zien hoe ver we van de Walen af staan.’

The decision in the late nineteenth century to adopt the Kollewijn spelling of Dutch in South Africa - actually an attempt at the time to save Dutch from displacement by Afrikaans - has permitted Afrikaans to assimilate foreign words better than Dutch. Malherbe (Die Huisgenoot, 28/9/28) appropriately refers to this practice as sjouwinistiese spelling. In some respects the Dutch and Flemings are still paying the price for not having adopted Kollewijn's recommendations in the 1890's; on the other hand, the puristic advantages of that spelling are of lesser importance to the Dutch. Suffeleers (1979: 180) sees a connection between the sensitivity with regard to the borrowing of foreign words and the subsequent desire to apply an indigenous spelling to those that can't be dispensed with:

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‘Dezelfde gevoeligheid zou voor een deel het “spellingpurisme” kunnen verklaren, dat vreemde woorden door een zo “Nederlands” mogelijk schriftbeeld in het eigen cultuurbezit wil verankeren...’

The above examples illustrate how much paralinguistic factors play a role in puristic tendencies.

Mention has been made before of the distinction so commonly made by Afrikaans linguists between Bedürfnis- and Luxuslehnwörter. (cf. p. 48) Ostyn's (1972: 53) observation was that ‘For the average immigrant in general and the Fleming in particular, there are not two categories of English words, i.e. the necessary ones and the superfluous ones. The distinctions are made by zealous purists.’ It cannot be denied that the same applies to Afrikaans to a degree.

Hypercorrection is also common to all linguistic environments where social pressure exists to be puristic. The close affinity of English and Afrikaans simply means that in this particular bilingual situation, the causes of hypercorrection are exceedingly common. Although hypercorrection was discussed under the disadvantages of purism (cf. 5.3), it can equally be seen as a form of purism; Suffeleers (1979: 182) even goes so far as to maintain that ‘overdreven purisme [is] ...een vorm van hypercorrectie.’

From a diachronic point of view the most important single factor in retaining, or perhaps even in restoring, the purity of Afrikaans has been standard Dutch. Uys (1983: 166-7) describes what occurred in Afrikaans earlier this century when the recognition of Afrikaans brought with it an increased demand for purism:

‘Na die amptelike erkenning van Afrikaans as offisiële landstaal het die Engelse aanslag teen hierdie “jong” taaltjie in al sy felheid losgebars en weer eens sou 'n teruggryp na Nederlands noodsaaklik wees vir oorlewing... Die taalmanne van 1925 het dus nou begryp dat hulle om praktiese redes nie al te ver van Nederlands moes afwyk nie. Hulle het dus van die standpunt uitgegaan om voorkeur aan die eie Afrikaanse woord of uitdrukking te gee. Besit ons self niks geskiks nie, of kan ons met niks bruikbaars vorendag kom nie, moet aan Nederlands ontleen word.’

The tendency to coin neologisms does not seem to have been as common at that time in the history of Afrikaans. It seems that would develop once the language had asserted itself and as the gap between Dutch and Afrikaans

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grew wider and also possibly as it was realised that Dutch often could not provide the goods. Du Toit (1965: 134) is but one of several scholars to remark that many anglicisms occur in Afrikaans where Dutch too either uses an English word or has borrowed from another language (cf. also Smith 1962: 64) But equally, in such instances in Afrikaans these days one is more likely to find a neologism or a loan translation, occasionally with the loss of a semantic distinction that exists in Dutch, for example: Dutch cake/koek = Afr. koek, Dutch fifty-fifty = Afr. vyftig-vyftig, Dutch liften = Afr. ryloop, Dutch nasynchroniseren (< French) = Afr. oorklank, Dutch airconditioning = Afr. lugreëling, -versorging, Dutch gehandicapte = Afr. gestremde, Dutch weekend/weekeinde = Afr. naweek. It is worth noting at this point that if an English word is borrowed into Afrikaans, because of the Afrikaner's intimate acquaintance with English, the word will always be used with exactly the same meaning as in English; the Dutch on the other hand have borrowed numerous English words that have undergone a shift in meaning, for example: cake (a particular sort), ponie (= fringe i.e. hairstyle; pronounced with a short o), pick-up (= record-player with a non-English stress on the second syllable), all-in-verzekeringspolis (= comprehensive insurance policy), catering (= home catering), marketing (= market research), planning (= time schedule). Not only does this not occur in South Africa, but puristic evasions of such words - a more common occurrence in Afrikaans in such cases - always correspond exactly in meaning with the English words they replace, for example: koek, spysenering, bemarking and beplanning all cover the same semantic field as the corresponding English words above and a ponie in Afrikaans is exactly that, a small horse (pronounced with a long o).

Even if Afrikaans has chosen in many instances to take a different path from Dutch with respect to tolerating loanwords, in more cases than one can probably now appreciate, Dutch must have baled Afrikaans out of difficulty in the past. Coetzee (1948: 13) remarked:

‘Ook in hierdie nuwe tydperk staan Nederlands beskermend teenoor die eertydse veldkind. Want dit moet ons duidelik besef: sonder die Nederlandse kultuur- en taalbronne om rykelik uit te put, kon die huidige stand van Afrikaans as ampstaal en as kultuurtaal slegs met die uiterste kraginspanning bereik word, indien wel.’

The fact that even today the Akademie does not completely ignore Dutch practice when making decisions on Afrikaans linguistic issues indicates that at least as far as attempts to keep the vocabulary of the language pure are concerned, Dutch can still function as a norm, even if only in a consultative

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capacity. In 1921 Boshoff (1921: 276) saw Dutch as the only solution to the shortcomings in Afrikaans vocabulary:

‘Die tyd is nou eers pas aangebreek, dat Afrikaans sy regmatige eise sal laat geld as wettige erfgenaam en loot van die Dietse stam. Waar die inherente vormkragte van Afrikaans self tekortskiet, sal Afrikaners hulle in die eerste plek moet behelp uit die oeroue woordvoorraad.’

Combrink (1968: 8), writing many years after Boshoff, has quite a different attitude:

‘Afrikaans het...hoegenaamd geen standhoudende voedingsbron behalwe die skeppingskrag en die trotse gees van sommige van sy sprekers nie.’

The synchronic approach to purism is indeed predominantly that expounded by Combrink here, as well as in his most recent publication on anglicisms (1984: 105) and by De Villiers' (1970: 245) previously mentioned attitude of ‘oorneem EN vertaal’ (cf. p. 73).

Coining new words is not easy and achieving general acceptance of such words can be even harder. As was mentioned on p. 149, komper acquired a certain frequency thanks to the support of the Cape newspaper group, Nasionale Pers; Pienaar (1931: 168) attributes the adoption of rolprent and tikskrif (tikmasjien, tikster etc.) to the support of Die Volkstem. Decisions of the Akademie (i.e. re the AWS) or vaktaalburos need such backing if they are to be generally accepted. Sometimes neither a neologism nor a loan translation has provided the solution, but a Lehnübertragung (cf. 7.2), i.e. a word which is close in literal meaning to the English term it seeks to avoid but one which is nevertheless not a literal translation, for example: blitsverkoper (best seller), duinebesie (beach buggy) bobbejaansleutel (monkey wrench) sypaadjie (sidewalk). It could be argued that such words are neologisms (cf. 7.3), which they are in a broader sense of the word, but there is a difference between them and other neologisms which bear no relation to English at all, for example: huurmotor (taxi) moltrein (underground) oorklank (to dub).

Finally, another very common form of purism in Afrikaans is the substitution of international vocabulary with indigenous synonyms, where such exist, which can lead to the problems of skynkongruensie discussed by Schutte. (cf. p. 151) Although Afrikaans has the words edisie, psigologies and unaniem, for example, and some (educated) people may not hesitate to use them, uitgawe, sielkundig and eenparig occur much more frequently.