The Influence of English on Afrikaans

1.3 The contribution this work hopes to make to a further understanding of anglicisms in Afrikaans

Nobody working in a field of science today is able to work in isolation without being indebted in some way or other to the work of his predecessors in that discipline. In that regard this work is certainly no exception; much of what I discuss has been dealt with by numerous scholars at various times in the past. No-one, however, has yet dealt with everything that I treat here nor has anyone dealt with everything I discuss in as much detail as I do here, although inevitably I deal with some aspects of the (possible) influence of English on Afrikaans in more depth than others. At times specialisation is simply impossible when tackling such a broad topic, but also on occasions the work of my predecessors has been so thorough as to be difficult to improve upon. In such instances I make due reference to those works.

Because of the vastness of the subject and its extreme importance to South Africa, some critics might feel that certain aspects of the influence of English on Afrikaans are not dealt with by me in the detail they deserve. Such issues must be relegated for the time being to the category of perspectives for further research. (cf. 8.00) Nevertheless, I will attempt to give a working framework of all aspects of the topic while some, particularly those never or scarcely dealt with before, will be covered more thoroughly. In fact, I fear this book may pose more questions than it will answer, but sometimes it is as important to ask the right questions as it is to give the right answers; at very least the former must precede the latter, for I feel sure that in the case of the English-Afrikaans contact situation and the influence resulting from it, some important questions have never ever been posed. What I don't answer, or cannot (yet) answer, perhaps others can find solutions for.

So many people before me have labelled phenomena in Afrikaans as English inspired when on further reflection it has appeared that this is quite possibly not the case. I suppose the reason is because none of us can live up to the expectations of Combrink (1984), previously mentioned on pp. 8-9. I will possibly also commit some such errors on occasions and it will be the task of those who follow me to point out where I too have found ‘a red under every bed’. I do tackle the problem from a different point of view, however, and will perhaps not make as many mistakes, because I have had the benefit of learning from those of my predecessors, or at least will make different errors of judgement; only subsequent research will tell. This will

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probably remain a problem in the analysis of English influence on Afrikaans to a degree, although change is now so rapid that we may better be able to monitor changes occurring in the future than we have to date. Smith (1962: 71) said of Rousseau's (1937) work:

‘Hoewel daar allerlei menings in die werk aangetref word waaromtrent die lesers dit nie met die skrywer eens sal wees nie, tog moet elkeen erken dat ons hier vir die eerste keer 'n ernstige en omvattende wetenskaplike verhandeling oor die vraagstuk het...’

Similarly with this work: if the reader, although he may not agree with me on every point, at least concedes that the issue deserved treatment again and is convinced I have made some new contribution to an understanding of it, however modest or controversial that contribution might prove to be, I will feel it was worth it, just as Rousseau's was. Both books can ultimately be regarded as records at their respective times in history of the state of affairs in Afrikaans with regard to English influence; as Von Humboldt said in 1836:

‘There can never be a moment of true standstill in language, just as little as in the ceaselessly flaming thought of man. By nature it is a continuous process of development...’ (Aitchison 1981: 15)

Further on Aitchison herself says:

‘What we are short of, are detailed records of language changes actually in progress.’ (p. 46)

As Rousseau's work has proven to be just that, mine may too.

Ultimately this book is about language change, but one specific form thereof - change arising in a language contact situation. The overall issue of linguistic change is a controversial one, because so often hard evidence of the processes involved is lacking. I would venture to suggest that harder evidence than is available in the South African situation under discussion would be difficult to find, which is not to maintain that this influence can necessarily always be proven - possibilities and probabilities often have to suffice.

I do not intend to concentrate on the causes of bilingual interference in South Africa, something competently done in great detail by Rousseau, but simply on the results and to postulate that we have now reached a stage where the influence English is having on Afrikaans has gone well beyond

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the realm of interference and has given rise to linguistic change. In 1964 Boshoff stated:

‘Dat Afrikaans in die toekoms moontlik meer aan Engels sal ontleen, is baie waarskynlik, maar die vraag is hoe, waar, waarom en wanneer.’ (p. 39)

Some answers to those questions will be offered here. I would even go so far as to suggest that the influence of English has now reached a degree where Afrikaners cannot be completely fluent in Afrikaans without a knowledge of English to a greater or lesser degree; in order to be completely articulate in all fields they need to be able to draw on both national languages, e.g. their repertoire of swearwords, (cf. 7.29.1)

It is not possible to give a complete inventory of English influence on Afrikaans as the topic is so vast and is, of course, an ongoing process. What I do wish to present, however, is a theoretical framework on the basis of my quite extensive, and yet by necessity limited, corpus, by which all forms of English influence can be classified. I want to focus on underlying principles rather than on merely enumerating countless instances and yet to do this, one's corpus must be large enough to allow the sort of generalisations linguists are interested in. And yet I am aiming at a categorisation which is intelligible to the layman as well as the trained linguist because it is a topic of utmost importance to every White South African, whether English or Afrikaans speaking.

Combrink (1984: 100-101) writes:

‘Daar het sedert 1917 talle stukke verskyn waarin die skrywer(s) leiding probeer gee oor taalsuiwerheid en Engelse invloed op Afrikaans... Maar, elke leidinggewer het (a) sy eie interpretasie aan die term Anglisisme gegee, (b) 'n eie, unieke versameling Afrikaanse taalbousels tot Anglisismes verklaar, en (c) 'n eie, unieke groep van sy Anglisismes “toegelaat”, of soos dit ook gestel word, as “ingeburger” beskou.’

I hope to differ from these previous writers in the following way. With regard to (a), I want to look objectively at what others understand by the term. With regard to (b), I too give a ‘unique’ list of anglicisms collected by me but without insisting that all are definitely the result of English influence - I merely postulate the possibility or probability of that being the case. And finally, with regard to Combrink's point (c), not being a native-speaker of Afrikaans, or even a South African for that matter, I am in no position to label phenomena as definitely ingeburger. I intend merely to discuss the concepts of inburgering/acceptability and standard

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Afrikaans in this context and leave the Afrikaans speaking reader to assess, according to the norms of his idiolect, how far the absorption of these linguistic phenomena has gone. The following statement by De Villiers (1977: 1) would seem to endorse my approach as being the only safe one to take although he himself advocates the importance of linguists regarding the setting of norms as part of their task:

‘Baie taalkundiges van die twintigste eeu was en is gekant teen wat húlle normatiewe grammatika noem, nl. reglementering, taalreëls, voorskrifte, ens. Die afkeer is verstaanbaar want baie taalvoorskrifte is afkomstig van skoolboeke en van taalrubrieke en -praatjies wat geneig is om allerlei sake te vereenvoudig tot 'n skerp skeiding tussen korrek en verkeerd, met beklemtoning van foute, meermale gebaseer op verouderde opvattings, en op persoonlike, stilistiese voor- en afkeure wat as reëls of wetenskaplike sekerhede aangebied word.’

I think it is possibly even an advantage in this case not being an Afrikaner, for the temptation to pass value judgements must be quite considerable for those who are.

Finally, because of the vast array of opinions on this topic in South Africa, both past and present, I hope the synthesis I will offer here of all the major, and often not so major, works and statements on anglicisms in Afrikaans will in itself be considered a useful contribution to scholarship.

1.3.1 Why consideration of Coloured Afrikaans is excluded from this study

It is a lamentable facet of South African life that virtually all deliberations on the position and future of Afrikaans fail to take the Coloured population into consideration, particularly as they are as numerous as White mother tongue speakers of the language and until the end of the nineteenth century the former even outnumbered the latter. I too have unfortunately been forced to ignore the language as spoken by the Coloured population of the Republic. This should not, however, be taken as any indication of my support for the distinction that is made by many in South Africa between White and Coloured speakers of Afrikaans; it is simply the result of my having to limit the object of my research somewhere for fear of it becoming too unwieldy. In addition, Coloured Afrikaans was inaccessible to me as a non-native-speaker of the language and as one virtually isolated from any contact with Coloureds due to the areas in which I have resided in

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South Africa, as well as in part to the constraints of apartheid. More importantly, however, the degree to which English has affected the spoken Afrikaans of Coloureds is far greater than that of Whites. To illustrate the problem I quote Van Wyk (1978: 47):

‘At present there are two situations which may contain the germs of diglossia. One is the use in informal contexts of a typical variety or dialect of Afrikaans by Coloured speakers in the Cape Province. It differs phonologically, lexically and, to a lesser extent, syntactically from the standard Afrikaans used by most of these speakers in formal situations. The sociolinguistic implications of the use of these two forms of Afrikaans in one community have not yet been studied fully. It is therefore difficult to decide whether it is a case of diglossia, of different dialects, or of different styles of the same language.’

Be that as it may, of greater relevance to this work is the fact that when it comes to written style and ‘official’ usage, the Afrikaans of Coloureds does not diverge from the norms of White Afrikaans and the standard language is what I am chiefly concerned with here.