It’s not that I have anything particular against Afrikaans – I’m just glad I no longer have to speak it. I simply wasn’t built to get around all the difficult sounds. I can’t brrrei – it comes out all flat and horrible sounding. Although I can fully understand quite a lot, pronouncing the title of this piece sounds like I’m trying to speak with marbles in my mouth. In fact, I firmly believe that the whole language was created as a weapon against the British.

Stay with me for a moment – it does actually make sense. If you think about it, South Africa as we know it was colonised by various people at various times with the most well known being the Dutch and the British. If you’ve ever heard someone speaking Dutch or tried reading a book in Dutch, you’ll know how similar the two languages are.

If you imagine for a moment that the people in South Africa at the time may have been mildly annoyed at suddenly having to sing “God save the Queen”, you can imagine how they’d have felt about speaking English.

Quite unsurprisingly, many people flat refused to speak English – labeling it the language of the oppressors (how’s that for irony?). It’s not a great logical leap to say that they began constructing the Afrikaans language in earnest not because they needed a new way of communicating but rather as a result of a quiet rebellion and a lingering of Dutch. I can imagine all the khaki-clad mense sitting around their kitchen table having a good chuckle about the Rooinek in town who just tried to say “Hoe gaan did met u?” (How are you?) or trying to buy a dress for his lady and hesitantly stuttering out “rooi rok”. No wonder there was so little love lost between the nations.

Of course, I’m being a little unfair on Afrikaans. To many people it’s a language that conveys a ton of meaning and has subtleties that make it very special to them. There are many redeeming factors – one of which is swearing. Even a predominantly English speaking person like myself can make use of Afrikaans swear words. There’s something about them that just releases tension like no other language (with the possible exception of the German Scheiße at high volume). The wonderful “only-possible-on-the-internet” SwearSaurus has some excellent examples for everyday use from the fairly tame “poephol” (asshole) to the quite rude “eet kak en vrek” (eat shit and die) – I suggest you take a look at it, just Google “Swearsaurus” and you’ll find examples to sate even the dirtiest mouth.

Despite what it may seem like though, one day when I have kids I’ll be teaching them Afrikaans and making sure they give it as much attention as they can at school. I do honestly believe that it’s a useful language to have under your belt both for when you’re living in South Africa and when you’d like to say something that nobody understands on foreign shores. The language is an integral part of our culture and I don’t think there’s anything that will ever shift that – not the mispronunciations of a young man or the historical links to the sadder parts of South Africa’s past.

Plus, it’s a lot of fun to sing in.

Bobbejaan klim die berg, so haastig en so lastig; bobbejaan klim die berg, so haastig en so lastig; bobbejaan klim die berg om die boere te vererg.
Hoera vir die jollie bobbejaan!
O moenie huil nie, o moenie treur nie, die Stellenbosse boys kom weer.
O moenie huil nie, o moenie treur nie, die Stellenbosse boys kom weer.

As an aside, the term”Rooinek” derives from the times of the Boer War when Afrikaner referred to immigrant Englishmen, whose white necks were particularly prone to sunburn. I have no idea where the term “Rock-spider” originated but sounded good as an insult at the time.

I’m afraid that with those inauspicious beginnings my introduction to learning this particular language was apathetic to say the least. Our poor teachers faced an uphill battled to convince a bunch of English kids that Afrikaans was a worthwhile language to learn, but learn it we did.

My biggest learning curve in mastering the language happened when I worked as a switchboard operator at a bank in a little town called Westonaria. It is a blip on the Far West Rand and English was only spoken by a few foreign miners. I very quickly had to learn to field staccato questions fired at me by customers who had no time for an inept telephonist who only spoke “Engels”. My favourite memory of that time is an old Oom who used come in once a week and systematically greeted each and every lady in the branch with a doff of the hat and a very serious “More Dametjie” (Morning little Lady). What a gentleman!

I have found that a lot of Afrikaans speakers think it is hysterically funny to listen to a foreigner trying to speak their language. I have lost count of the number of times I have tried to carry on a polite conversation with someone and they burst out laughing because my pronunciation or syntax is a bit odd to their ears. For some inexplicable reason, my English accent is more pronounced when I speak Afrikaans than when I speak English.

The worst case of this was when I visited and old uncle of my husband’s on a farm in the depths of the Free State. I had been told that the Oom did not speak much English so I did the polite thing and spoke to him in his own language. Imagine my embarrassment when after trying my best to have a conversation with the old geezer, he turns to my hubby and asked “Wat sê sy?” Well, the entire clan fell about with hoots of laughter. Needless to say, after that I gave up and only spoke English to the entire family and even now, my children and I are referred to as “Die Engelse Niggies” (The English Cousins).

These days I generally speak very little Afrikaans and if necessary, I start the conversation in Afrikaans and then switch to English as soon as I can with a gentle “Ek’s jammer maar ek kannie so baie goed Afrikaans praat nie.”

The thing about writing this, is that in a perfect world, I’d address the language in isolation, as just a means of expression. But it’s almost impossible without invoking the association with the white nation in South Africa that call themselves “Afrikaners”. We’re made up of all kinds of european and (although few will admit) some eastern and african DNA, put into a melting pot, adding some kitchen dutch.

There’s little common ancestry, just a bunch of people that ended up banding together on the southern tip of Africa after leaving a boat or two.
I guess at that point, the only thing that truly binds the Afrikaner nation, as the name suggests, is the language. Most people feel like they want to belong, and I guess Afrikanerdom is as close as they’ll ever get.

It’s the language that my forebearers chose to shove down the throats of native people and other immigrants during school. I’m sure the other writers will testify to that. Let it just be noted that it’s not the most popular tongue around.

When thinking “Afrikaans”, one can’t help but envision crappy music made by crappy artists. A stiff-upper-lip puritanical culture punctuated by brandy and fistfights. Police beating protesters, and “volksliedjies” that have conveniently lifted music and loosely translated lyrics from europeans. Let us not forget everybody’s favourite K-word.

I guess that’s why the language seems like such a hodge-podge of connotations for me. Seldom original, and totally unique.
Leeching off of other cultures, then adding spice.

Even in the mouths of Afrikaans youth (and myself), the language is often interspersed with english, and seems to lose it’s boundaries and become nondistinct.
I think of the oft repeated joke: “Hey Piet, wat is die engels vir spanner?” (Hey Piet, what is the english for spanner?)

My forefathers would absolutely cringe at the thought. After all, it was the “rooinekke” that put their families into concentration camps and burnt down their farms.

Yet I cannot help but get all mushy when reading Afrikaans poetry, and marvel at the expressive power of the language. It seems so far removed from being forced to read the old Afrikaans standby “Kringe in ‘n bos” in a classroom. Can I think of another great afrikaans book? No. Seriously, I can’t. And it wasn’t all that good either. At best I can describe 99% of Afrikaans culture as a little “weak”.

I stood in Hatfield square two weeks ago to watch a series of Afrikaans rock bands perform. They’ve set out to re-write the rules about “Afrikaans”. I guess they feel shackled by a past they didn’t create. I know I do. But then what IS our identity to become?

I hope they succeed, in something, but the crowd made me uneasy. It was almost like warping back in time 15 years or so.
I hadn’t been to such a pale party in a while, for a moment I lost hope… but then maybe they all just feel as disconnected from the rest of the world as I do.

I guess this piece of writing says it all. It’s confused, it’s all over the place. Not even an Afrikaner can totally make sense of it all. At times it’s a language, it times a culture, at times a nation.
It doesn’t seem to have a place and yet does. It’s speakers ended up being on the receiving end, the pointy end (sometimes both) of a lot of crazy shit. Hopefully those artists will prevail and Afrikaans will become something else.

Maybe they’ll just confuse the matter even further.

Maybe it will always be seen as the language of the oppressor, and the internally repressed.

I know that my mother and her siblings were given a hard time by the local kids when they arrived in South Africa in the early 60’s and I believe that a lot of rooi nekke were in the same boat, especially the ones with fresh English accents.

So it’s a possibility that I started off my learning career with a little disdain towards the language and the people. And I say that with the utmost ignorance because I didn’t know anything about them or their culture.

And that’s really where my problem lies.

From the age of six to fifteen I had but one Afrikaans person in my life per year – and that was my teacher. I still remember most of them by name and definitely remember what each one looked like because I used to loathe walking into that classroom each and every day to sit and listen to something that I had no will to learn.

We learn our primary language by speaking and repeating what our parents say which is a very different experience to being told to sit down, shut up and memorise grammar and punctuation rules for an hour at a time.

Yes, the Afrikaans teachers I had were by far the most hardcore of disciplinarians.

When I look back at them all I realise (conversely) that we probably treated them the worst of all, and we knew how to make a teacher cry. After all, we all hated their class. As I thought about it more while writing this piece I figured that they probably felt like the real outsiders. No matter what they thought or who they were, they were just the Afrikaans teacher to us, and at a very liberal English all-boys school in the 80’s and 90’s that might’ve not been all that pleasant.

Of course, what pre-teen is going to rationalise to that extent. I simply didn’t like the language, the class, the lectures or the exams and I did my damndest just to pass. And pass I did, with a flying “E” on higher grade. And “E” really does stand for Enough because an F would’ve cost me dearly.

My reckoning is that I learned as much Afrikaans at school that I would have picked up anyway just living in the country. I can understand conversations but it’s impossible for me to join in and that has served me just fine. Even when working for two years at a predominantly Afrikaans company I sat in meetings which were held in Afrikaans and just replied in English – everyone was happy.

What surprised me was that on my last trip back home I felt a newly found soft spot for the language, especially on our tour through the small towns of the Western Cape. It made me realise (as I picked a peppercorn out of my teeth from my freshly cut biltong) that it was a part of what made me and whether I like it or not I’m a small part rock-spider.