Old Takkies Indaba

Ek is mal daaroor om Afrikaans te praat want dit is ‘n lekker taal, but I am more comfortable writing in English. As ek met my pa praat, praat ons Afrikaans, but the conversation switches to English when I speak to my mom. I hear Afrikaans on a daily basis in the most “English” of countries and have used Afrikaans to establish that I am not from England while traveling through Europe. I know nothing about linguistics, but instead a language is more about the people who speak it.

Some words and expressions just sound so much better/dramatic in Afrikaans – one of them being deurmekaar. That word sums up my attitude towards a language I grew up with.

My English speaking mom (from the Free State) was told it’s better to bring up your kids with a single home language and since we lived in an Afrikaans community with Afrikaans schools she managed to master “die taal” for our benefit. In hindsight we were lucky since most of the good kid’s TV programs were dubbed over into Afrikaans anyway. Even though we only spoke Afrikaans I quickly realised that our English mother earned us a “foreigner” status amongst my peers who insisted that I say our nightly prayers in English. I started to associate Afrikaans with narrow-mindedness and viewed Afrikaners as boring and conservative. So when my parents suggested that I continue my education in English I jumped at the opportunity.

Only armoured with a limited English vocab I entered a different world. One that taught me that there is a difference between English and Afrikaans speaking South Africans. Afrikaners might be viewed as a parochial nation responsible for apartheid, but the same time English do have the tendency to appear as being snobbish and having a better-than-you attitude*.

It was only at Stellenbosch, a University with so many language issues, where I started to feel at ease with the cultures associated with both Afrikaans and English. For the first time I could relate to the music we had to do volkspele to when I was little – “Afrikaners is plesierig dit kan julle glo”, transformed into one of my favourite Karen Zoid songs. But, it was while working on a demographics project for the US I realised that the Afrikaans youth is embarrassed to admit that Afrikaans is their home language.

As a lecturer I had to present a class in Afrikaans and English. I assumed that everybody understood English, but since we had a few international students I asked the following question in Afrikaans – “is daar enige van julle wat glad nie ‘n woord van Afrikaans verstaan nie”. I was overwhelmed by a sea of hands produced by a bunch of students who obviously had to pass their Afrikaans exam to get into University and who managed to understand the question without any difficulty. I asked the question again, but this time for the benefit of the non South Africans. Their attitude was remarkably different, they fully understood that they might have to master Afrikaans at an Afrikaans university and were perfectly willing to attempt this. I find that even though it opens them to ridicule, Afrikaners are always willing to communicate in their second language, but English speaking South Africans most often refuse to reciprocate that courtesy.

I understand that the world language is English. I thank my parents for providing me the opportunity to be comfortable to communicate in English, but I love the idea of speaking a language which is unique to my heritage without typecasting me. I enjoy the new wave of language preservation I’ve come across in Europe even if it means translating documents into Welsh. I hope that young South Africans will stop thinking of English as the “cool” language as I did once and that people will not be stereotyped based on the language they speak.

I am looking forward to seeing young South Africans being proud of their language regardless of what it might be. It means a future with brilliant music, TV shows and theatre productions in Afrikaans and hopefully regain that sense of belonging we seem to have lost.

* Expression provided by my German speaking South African friend.