The Influence of English on Afrikaans

1.1 The uniqueness of the linguistic situation in South Africa, with reference to Afrikaans in particular

Much has been written on bilingualism, both general studies as well as case studies. Works on specific bilingual situations such as Haugen's (1953) on Norwegian in America, Ostyn's (1972) on Flemish in Chicago and Clyne's (1967, 1977) on Dutch in Australia deal with quite different situations from that in which English and Afrikaans find themselves. This situation is quite unique for a number of reasons.

To begin with, this is the only case in British colonial history where English had to compete with the language of another civilised western power which, from the beginning, has been and still is for the time being,

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the language of the majority of White settlers. The White population still splits approximately 60/40 in favour of Afrikaners.

The fact that the direction of the influence has been predominantly from the language of the minority to the language of the majority does, it is true, have a parallel in Belgium, but there are also distinct differences from the Belgian situation. The bilingual Fleming is always able to look to the language of Holland as a guide to what his language is like in a context isolated from deep-rooted French influence. The French Canadian, to quote another obvious example, can look to Paris for guidance in instances where he suspects his speech has been corrupted. Immigrants in America or Australia, whose speech is also highly susceptible to interference from the language of the host community, can also look to ‘home’ to correct their errors. The Afrikaner on the other hand, can look nowhere else. What constitutes ‘correct’ Afrikaans? A knowledge of Dutch is as good as non-existent in South Africa today and would be considered unacceptable for ideological reasons anyway, quite apart from Dutch now being an impractical norm to apply. Afrikaans, unlike all other emigrant European languages spoken in bilingual and multilingual societies, is in the process of establishing its own standard. Perhaps a certain analogy exists with Yiddish which, although still basically German despite a substantial ad-mixture of Hebrew and Slavonic, is totally isolated from Germany and for both practical as well as ideological reasons, German cannot serve as a model for what is ‘correct’ Yiddish either. Yiddish, however, like Afrikaans in the nineteenth century, still suffers from a lack of true standardisation.

Afrikaans is no longer spoken anywhere in total isolation from English. The high degree of bilingualism among Afrikaners in particular, but also more and more among English speakers, is unique, as is the integration of English and Afrikaans speaking people. Malherbe (1966: 20) claimed that 60% of the Whites were bilingual (undoubtedly even higher now) and that this high figure is due not merely to the fact that both official languages are taught at school, but also and chiefly to the widespread geographic and social interspersion of English and Afrikaans speaking people in South Africa. Linguistic diffusion inevitably follows cultural diffusion. On the failure of British attempts in the nineteenth century to replace Cape Dutch by English, Du Toit (1965: 130) had the following to say:

‘Tog het dit daarin geslaag om die taal in meerdere of mindere mate rooi te verf en om hom 'n hele ent op die weg na 'n “Afrikaanse” mengtaal te stoot, die eerste stap... tot dié eentaligheid waarin tweetaligheid soms sy logiese einde vind.’

In 1978 Van Wyk added:

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‘Multilingualism is a reality which no South African can escape. Monolingualism is rare, being confined mostly to underdeveloped areas with homogeneous communities’ (p. 29)

where he is of course also referring to non-Europeans. English is not a foreign language to the Afrikaner, it is his second language and his proficiency in it is an admirable and unique achievement.

Of course anglicisms as such are not unique to Afrikaans, but the magnitude of the influence English is having on the language must surely be. Their ubiquitous presence in Afrikaans makes agreement on what constitutes the standard language even more difficult to achieve than it is in more linguistically homogeneous societies and makes attaining that ideal all the more elusive:

‘Dit is eweneens 'n feit dat hierdie ideaal nie deur Afrikaanssprekers - of die sprekers van enige taal - bereik word nie.’ (Van Rensburg 1983: 134)

This applies to Afrikaners more than to the speakers of many other European languages, particularly with regard to those anglicisms which are not (yet) regarded as standard Afrikaans to the extent that they are also considered acceptable in written style; to use Van Rensburg's terminology, they are still regarded as nie-standaardtaalvorme.

The hostility that still exists in some Afrikaans circles to English, and the consequent trend towards (exaggerated) purism, is something the Flemish situation shares, but it does not occur in the bilingual migrant situations cited above which many modern studies of bilingualism have been based on. I feel such studies of the linguistic performance of migrant groups bear little relevance to the South African situation. I found them in fact to be of very little help in gaining a better understanding of the predicament in which Afrikaans finds itself.

Another fascinating and totally unique facet of the language problem in South Africa is the language policy of the government vis-à-vis the large non-White population, particularly in the light of the homeland policy whereby, once independence is granted, these nations are free to implement their own language policy which inevitably favours English, even if lip service continues to be done to Afrikaans. Such sovereign states are then also free to televise, for example, and the strictly bilingual policy of the SABC is faced with English dominated competition. The competition Afrikaans faces with English in South Africa is analogous to that which

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Dutch faces vis-à-vis French in Belgium, but the odds are overwhelmingly stacked against Afrikaans, which is no longer the case in Belgium.

Yet another unique aspect of this particular contact situation is the close affinity of English and Afrikaans; after all, had the Normans never invaded Britain, English and Dutch would probably be mutually intelligible today. Clearly such close historical ties with so many morphological structures, syntactic patterns and even parallel analytical development in common have created a climate in which the mutual influence is able to go to far greater lengths, and take a much more subtle course than would be the case if the two languages were not as closely related, such as is the case in Belgium and Canada. A possibly valid comparison with a similar development in the history of Germanic languages is provided by the enormous influence of German on the dialects of Scandinavia during the late Middle Ages; German, particularly the Low German of the Hanseatic League, is also very closely related to Scandinavian. The cities of Denmark, Norway and Sweden were bastions of German language and culture, as the cities of South Africa have always been English dominated, and the contact with German came in an age prior to the standardisation of Danish and Swedish, as was the case in South Africa, and thus when standardisation did finally occur in Scandinavia, a large German legacy was inevitable and indispensable; linguistic integration had rendered certain German elements inseparable from the indigenous.

Finally, Afrikaners find themselves today in the unique position of being able to draw on a double linguistic heritage, Dutch and English, of which the latter, remarkably enough, is more often than not the less foreign of the two.