Comments on: Alma Mater or I’m-A-Maatie

By: Cloudgazer

Cloudgazer — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 15:59:33 +0000

wow, I couldn’t imagine attending lectures in any language but my mother tongue. I tended to drift off and daydream in class at the best of times. You must have gotten quite good at doodling Wends.

By: samee

samee — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 14:25:54 +0000

Great Wends : )
I didnt know you went to Stellenbosch. Very brave.

By: Good Charlie

Good Charlie — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 10:29:29 +0000

@Wendy

The thought of having tweedy Afrikaans professors barking at me didn’t appeal!

By: Chatsubo

Chatsubo — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 10:20:33 +0000

I went to Tukkies (Pretoria) to study Computer Science, and initially all the “computer” courses had seperate lectures in Afrikaans and English. And then surprisingly, as the herd culled itself towards the latter years, we were switched to having only 1 lecture in English. Mostly the lecturer would walk in first day, have a quick poll, realize that some foreign students had no hope of grasping Afrikaans, and would declare the remaining lectures as being English.

There was a point where I was wondering how we got to exclusively English lectures in an Afrikaans university, with the bulk of the class being Afrikaans speaking. But then we all realized that having the lectures in English could only be good for our communication skills in the IT industry as a whole. I actually cannot imagine having a conversation about computers exclusively in Afrikaans.

The rest of the courses, kept the dual lecture schedule for the rest of the years, if I recall correctly.

By: Joachim

Joachim — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 07:48:26 +0000

15 years ago. Wow. Isn’t that amazing? Thanks, babe, for another good morning read.

By: theFlipSide

theFlipSide — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 07:25:29 +0000

I had a couple of very “English” friends at Stellenbosch. They didn’t dare moan – they could have gone to plenty of English Universities closer to home, but they wanted to go to Stellenbosch. As first years we were called “onkruide” – after a couple of months I had to explain to a friend of mine what it meant when I realised that she didn’t know that being called an onkruid is not cool.

What I do find weird is that my friends and I switch over to English when a non-Afrikaans friend joins the conversation, even though they did study at Stellenbosch for a couple of years.
theFlipSide´s last blog ..THE iPHONE AND OTHER REMARKABLE GADGETS

By: Wendy

Wendy — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 07:23:25 +0000

@GC: What reason? The world is English?

By: Good Charlie

Good Charlie — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 07:21:56 +0000

I avoided the Boere institutions of tertiary learning for that very reason!

By: Wendy

Wendy — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 06:47:16 +0000

@Alex: My cousin went to RAU and my other cousin when to Pretoria, they both had many classes in English which incensed me even more at the time.

@Diva: It didn’t make sense to study in Afrikaans to me either (literally and figuratively). But, in hindsight, I’m glad that I did. I’m glad that I can speak enough and understand enough to get by, it makes me feel more South African. I wouldn’t have had that if it weren’t for 4 years at Matieland.

By: Diva

Diva — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 06:31:24 +0000

I went from an Afrikaans high school to an english technikon and us afrikaans students were in the minority. But studying further in Afrikaans did not make sense to me – the world is English, so it made sense to study further in English…didn’t it?