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The Afrikaanses of the world | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| numerodix Trilingual Hexaglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 6784 days ago 856 posts - 1226 votes  Speaks: EnglishC2*, Norwegian*, Polish*, Italian, Dutch, French Studies: Portuguese, Mandarin | Message 1 of 28 25 September 2011 at 4:42pm | IP Logged | ||
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I have the impression that Afrikaans is a relatively popular language on the forum. Quite
a few people have it on their learning list and it tends to come up quite a bit. I've been curious about it for a while and I now finally have the opportunity to read a book in it, which is how I usually get to know a language for real. But the book was not that easy to get, I actually had a family member get it for me as it coincided with their trip down south. Prior to that I had been looking around for online bookstores and I was surprised basically at how small the language seemed to be. Even in South African bookstores Afrikaans seems to be a small sub category. There's little internet radio too. When I finally looked it up it turned out that it has 6-7 million speakers, which depending on the country and its political importance can mean different things. But if English is the dominant language for those speakers anyway, it might have a very small impact. Well, the book is some kind of suspense/thriller which is not too bad, but it's also the first book I might have bought myself. Amazon recently added some ebooks in Afrikaans and browsing those I just didn't find anything of interest. So that is my premise here. With a language like Afrikaans, which has a small cultural footprint, and other languages like it, what is your interest in them? Do you study it for the culture (which is what I generally do)? Do you study it out of linguistic curiosity? Or is it that you want to speak it in your area or with people you hope to meet? Basically "What is your motivation for studying languages?", but applied to the more niche languages. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| lichtrausch Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 5961 days ago 525 posts - 1072 votes Speaks: English*, German, Japanese Studies: Korean, Mandarin | Message 2 of 28 25 September 2011 at 5:09pm | IP Logged | ||
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I avoid studying small languages. Hypothetically speaking, if there was some small language in the world which possessed a culture I was absolutely enthralled with, to the point where I liked almost all its music, books, cuisine, etc., I wouldn't mind learning that language. But no such language/culture exists for me.
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| montmorency Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4829 days ago 2371 posts - 3676 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Danish, Welsh | Message 3 of 28 25 September 2011 at 6:12pm | IP Logged | ||
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If you haven't done so, you might want to read the Wikipdia page:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afrikaans I wouldn't say it paints a rosy picture, but it's a not discouraging one for supporters of the language. Of course, it might have been written with a bias. But, e.g. the number of books published each year is not trivial, although of course cannot compete with English. There are supposed to be about 100,000 speakers of the language in England (c.f. the thread about "secret languages"!). There are a surprising number of people in England with a connection to South Africa of one sort or another (even if they are not Afrikaans speakers). I visited Cape Town and Paarl last year, and was surprised at the evidence of Afrikaans there, having previously, and erroneously thought it to be a traditionally English-speaking area. I couldn't have been more wrong. It's a strange country, and I wouldn't like to live there, but it's definitely worth a visit. EDIT: There is an interesting quarter of Cape Town called Bo-Kaap (various spellings). If you google this, there is an intriguing claim made about the influence of this area on the language (I've seen similar text on several sites): "Bokaap - Malay Quarter in Cape Town The "Bo Kaap" or "Cape Malay Quarter" belongs to the culturally and historically most interesting parts of Cape Town. Many of the inhabitants are decendants of the people from Indonesia (Batavia), Sri Lanka, India and Malaysia, who were captured in the 17th and 18th century and enslaved by the Dutch-East Indian Trading Company. Many were Mulims and others were converted to Islam by the Cape Muslim community. The Cape Malays and their religious leaders played an important role in the development of the language and culture of the Cape colony. The Afrikaans language evolved as a language of its own through a simplification of Dutch in order for the slaves to be able to communicate with the Dutch and amongst each others, since they all came from different countries and cultures. Educated Muslims were the first to write texts in Afrikaans." Edited by montmorency on 25 September 2011 at 6:27pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6704 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 4 of 28 25 September 2011 at 6:45pm | IP Logged | ||
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I decided to go for Afrikaans because its pronunciation is relatively close to the spelling and I know just enough Dutch to make the acquisition of vocabulary relatively easy. But like Numerodix I find it puzzling that it should be so difficult to find texts and audio sources in Afrikaans when it has 6-7 million speakers.
I ordered my dictionary from South Africa through the internet, and I have bought a few magazines and one book as souvenirs during my travels til South Africa. However since I decided to learn Afrikaans I have only passed through Jo'burg Airport once ... and it was extremely limited what they had got there. But that even common bookstores should have few books in the language comes as a surprise. Quite generally I don't mind learning 'small' languages. As long as I can get enough materials a low number number of speakers won't keep me from spending time on a language. Edited by Iversen on 27 September 2011 at 9:48am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Ziloh Newbie China Joined 4949 days ago 8 posts - 11 votes Speaks: English* | Message 5 of 28 25 September 2011 at 8:53pm | IP Logged | ||
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My parents first language is Afrikaans. Though they never brought up me with the
language as we had moved to America by then. I'm currently learning it, as quite a bit of my family, specifically my mother's side, have great difficulty with English. There are also quite a bit of Afrikaans speakers in the UK from my knowledge, with South Africa in the state it is in, there was quite a brain drain. Any of my cousins or family with a degree or any tertiary education have all gone to Australia, UK, or the USA (mostly UK though). I don't see much reason to learn some of these minor languages unless you have cultural ties or something similar. I had quite a hard time with finding material for Afrikaans as well, so I've been pestering my family and abusing Skype. I also have resorted to using a dictionary from about the 1970's that is Afrikaans-English, the one my parents were required to have for school. Best of luck if you decide to embark on learning a small language, the material scavenging is the worst. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| montmorency Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4829 days ago 2371 posts - 3676 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Danish, Welsh | Message 6 of 28 26 September 2011 at 4:34pm | IP Logged | ||
http://www.kalahari.com/help/help.aspx Any good? They seem to ship abroad....looks like it would be R180, which is about £14 ...hmm...but if that covers a lot of books, maybe not too bad. I notice there were some Afrikaans books on Kindle, but possibly mostly fiction, which I think you said you didn't read much of. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Remster Diglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 4806 days ago 120 posts - 134 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English Studies: German, French | Message 7 of 28 30 September 2011 at 12:48pm | IP Logged | ||
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I think it's mainly because of the interest in the culture and the historical ties it has with Dutch.
Afrikaans is one of eleven or twelve official languages in South-Africa. Maybe most people speaking Afrikaans are bilingual. Unless you have a specific reason to learn Afrikaans, it might be better to go for Dutch. Afrikaans is for the most part ''simplified'' Dutch. Hence the Dutch have less trouble understanding Afrikaans than the other way around. If you know Dutch You'll have an edge in Afrikaans. If you know Afrikaans, you'll most likely stumble upon the Dutch grammar. An example of what I know is: Dutch: Ik ben Jij/Je/U bent Hij/Zij/Het is Wij zijn Jullie zijn Zij zijn Afrikaans: Uses only ''is'' for everthing. Afrikaans ek is jy/u is hy/sy/dit is ons is julle is hulle is (Edit: Thanks to Mick33 (page 2) for correcting my mistake of the Afrikaans language). I myself don't speak it, therefore it was easy to get caught back in the Dutch spelling. Therefore you can see which one is more difficult. I'm a native Dutch speaker and from my father's side we have native Afrikaans speakers. So I have heard it once in a while. I hope this helped, if it's too much, I apologize. If I made any mistakes in my explenation, please do say, so I can correct them. Edited by Remster on 09 October 2011 at 1:13pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| lex3000 Diglot Newbie United Kingdom afrikaanslond&# Joined 5251 days ago 6 posts - 12 votes Speaks: English*, Afrikaans Studies: Esperanto | Message 8 of 28 06 October 2011 at 3:00pm | IP Logged | ||
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I agree with you that interest in Afrikaans among non-South Africans is really growing at the moment both in South Africa and overseas. I started learning in 1998 when I left university in Leeds because a colleague suggested it. I can tell you, I didn't manage to find any other Afrikaans speakers there at the time! Although my dad is South African we don't speak it together so that's not been a motivation.
I don't think people are learning Afrikaans because of a particular interest in Dutch or the Netherlands, although that connection does make it interesting and so it has some use in Europe. I think people are learning because they find it an interesting and comparatively uncomplicated language to learn. It's certainly been helpful when I've studies German and Swedish in evening class. I think it's perfectly possible to accept the opposing views that Afrikaans is both a dialect of Dutch and a language in its own right. I don't think people are learning it however because they see it as some sort of “Dutch lite”. The internet has made learning and practising Afrikaans a lot easier and there is a big blog and podcast/potgooi scene - I write an Afrikaans blog and I know another learner in America who also writes one. The Afrikaans Wikipedia is a fantastic resource and I've written articles on subjects not related to South Africa for it. However, an Afrikaans friend told me that there are a lot of Dutch speakers on there who hold considerable sway over what is included although this situation might have changed. I think a measure of the level of new interest in the language is shown by the fact that two new editions of Teach Yourself Afrikaans (2005 and 2010) as well as Colloquial Afrikaans (2000) have been published since 2000. I live in London and can fairly easily buy books here and there's also a lot available on Kalahari, Amazon and eBay. I've also got a friend whose Afrikaans sci-fi book is being published this month and it will also be available in e-book format so it's a scene which has a strong market and which embraces new opportunities. However, I've also been disappointed by the availability of books when I've been to South Africa. However, I don't hold the view that there is no point in learning a "small language". If you are interested in a language you can always find occasion to use it as any Esperantist will tell you. I also don't think you necessarily need a particular interest in the culture or a special reason to want to learn a language; plenty of people learn English out of necessity and with little interest in the British or America culture. If you're interested in it, go and learn it. 3 persons have voted this message useful |
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