Speaking In Code
Chapter 1
Go ahead.
Ban it.
Strike it from the school curriculum.
Take every Afrikaans page that’s ever been penned and burn it in front of the Voortrekker Monument.
Change the name of every Afrikaans-name-bearing city, suburb, town, highway, street and residential driveway.
Gag the mouths of every remaining Afrikaans-speaking South-African*.
You’ve been trying to crush Afrikaans into all kinds of zero since 1994.
But this behavior has been extremely shortsighted, and should be reversed with immediate effect!
And here’s the reason why:
Chapter 2
Back in the ‘90’s on a trip abroad, a friend and I decided to climb to stand at the feet of the statue of Christ that towers with outstretched arms over the city of Rio.
About half way up we stumbled upon a refreshment stand.
As hydrated as the compressed leaf I’d left in my biology book from standard five, it was the greatest thing I’d seen in Rio so far, and that statue was going to take a lot to beat it.
We praised the foresight of the Brazilian tourism industry, and scrambled toward the small oasis alongside other survivors with identical thought-bubbles hovering above their desiccated brows.
Thankfully we were nowhere near Jo’burg, because our spiral-perms had sweated flat. Our “I-HEART-RIO” vests revealed our army-tans. Our denim cut-offs revealed our why-wax-who’s-gonna-know-us-here? legs. Our slops restrained crimson feet ending in swollen yellow blisters between our first and big toes.
Unfortunately however, I found myself standing behind the second greatest thing I’d seen in Rio so far, and that statue was quickly descending off my list of “things-to-do-in-Brazil”.
Pressed up in front of me in line, stood the most good-looking guy I’d seen since Tom Cruise [still cool then] in the In-Flight movie.
“WOW!” I exhaled into his face.
I impressively multitasked by holding his gaze, fracturing Anja’s ribs, throwing back liquid and squealing, “how hot’s this guy???” simultaneously.
[In retrospect – other than exhausted, I cannot imagine a plausible reason as to why I didn’t lift up my camera and take a close-up of him at the same time.]
Unbelievable, I’ll bet you’re wondering. From whence had a vision of beauty such as I summoned up the kind of courage not even the Dutch could lay claim to?
Was I high on South-America’s gross domestic product?
Had my animal instinct been unleashed through fatigue?
Had hallucinations been brought on by sunstroke?
No.
I was brimming with confidence because I was speaking in Afrikaans!
Chapter 3
“Thanks!” he replied.
“…”, I snapped back in a quick-witted recovery.
Why could he respond with this crippling answer?
Because he was from Hillbrow.
Epilogue
Okay, not the textbook case study I was looking for, but a deeper investigation here will reveal that Afrikaans is a powerfully surreptitious method to infiltrate other nations.
And has the potential to make every single South-African a Johannes Bond!
*Axing the springbok from the national rugby team jersey is off-sides. He cannot speak Afrikaans.
…but the oxen can.
It’s been drummed, whipped and beaten into him before, during and since the Great Trek with such affliction that I don’t think he’d have the audacity to speak anything else!
So let’s send him back to the Holland-ish, Germany-ish, France-ish area from whence he came.
Mmm. Nicely written. I enjoyed it. The benefits of the language in a foreign place are bright as day, but the challenges it carries domestically is where the real conversation is at.
Curious to see what others write.
Motheo´s last blog ..Printing money through curing AIDS – is it okay?
Very good piece, I too have found that Afrikaans has been slightly useful even in the States, if only to call someone a “doos” in traffic, it rolls off the tongue really well.
@Motheo, from what I’ve sneaked a peek at so far, we should have some interesting debate over the next month on this topic.
Alex Papadopulos´s last blog ..Biltong Box – Update
Heheh. Very interesting actually – I suspect there are more people who understand Afrikaans than we give credit for. It’s nice to think of ourselves as isolated when we’re in other countries. I make it my mission to teach at least a little bit of it (even if only swear words) to people from foreign climes.
Don’t teach ANYONE Rob! Then it doesn’t work!
Interesting perspective, Sandy! Very well done.
interesting how we respond when in a foreign place to a tongue many of us whitey pretend we do not understand when on SA soil (not saying u Sandy!)
I was standing in a queue in Disneyland when I heard somebody shout at their kids in a foreign language (you would be send to jail if you had to do something like that in English). It took a while before I realised that the lady was speaking very bad Afrikaans and I doubt that her children even understood what she said, but she must have felt good about it.
Don’t ever think you’ll get away with Afrikaans in London though, somebody WILL understand you.
theFlipSide´s last blog ..Barcelona & Tamariu
I was in Turkey and when asked where I was from I got, “Oh, South Africa! Afrikaans! Goeie more, hoe gaan dit, do you want to buy a carpet?” LOL
So did you buy a carpet? Can’t keep us in suspense like that. Oh. wait. You were talking about the Afrikaans weren’t you? Um… Sandy. What happened with the hot Afrikaaner on the mountain?
come to think of it, I hear Afrikaans more regularly than I would have ever thought. There was a lady a few weeks ago shouting at her kid in the local grocery store, made me nostalgic.
I can’t speak Afrikaans at all. So i wouldn’t even understand a thing.
@Carla, how is it that we can go through 12 years of schooling and not be fluent, nevermind the fact that we are immersed to an extent…
I passed Afrikaans on higher grade with a D – no idea how because I think I think I left out the answers to half the papers..
I can understand, but don’t ask me to speak
I can get by with the basics but my afrikaans really sucked in school. Had to drop to standard grade to pass. *hahaha* I think to a large extent i was to blame myself. I was so irritated by the fact i had to learn it, that i really didn’t bother much.
That’s what I’m still trying to come to grips with, WHY I hated afrikaans so much, I’m sure a lot of people feel the same
Alex Papadopulos´s last blog ..Biltong Box – Update
I know exactly why I hated Afrikaans so much.
Enter the circle of trust and share Rob
Hahah. I will as soon as my post is published
Haha fair enough!
Afrikaans hasn’t only suffered from the attempts to being ‘crushed into all kinds of zero ‘ since ‘94. Attempts to obliterate Afrikaans from existence have been around everytime the British ruled in South Africa by outlawing the use of Afrikaans in schools and business. No-one succeeded and no-one ever will. I am proudly Afrikaans speaking with an excellent command of English, isiZulu and xi-Tsonga, thank you very much!