Sunday, June 28, 2015
Anthony Wilson
Anthony Wilson
Sir, if you know the history of Afrikaans, of which I will not go into here, but suffice to say - Some of us can trace our ancestry right back to the Khoi and San. We know that it was our forebears who needed to find a way to communicate with the cosmopolitan settlement in the southernmost part of Africa. They started mixing or creolizing these languages. The white man wrote it down because he understood what was happening at the Cape. Afrikaans was born like fanagalore, the language they speak in the mines. It was a predominantly Dutch derivative because we were then a Dutch Colony. English I think only came to this country in 1685. The Afrikaners developed the language because they were the people who understood the semantics of language. They cannot however deny that the genesis of what became Afrikaans came from our ancestors and they have denied it for many years. Did you know that the oldest printed Afrikaans that is still with us at the Bo-Kaapse Museum is books that were used by Muslim Children at their Madrasahs! Thanks to Dr. Achmat Davids who proved all this. Google Neville Alexander and you will be amazed what this linguist wrote the origins of Afrikaans or read Vernon February’s “Mind your Colour”. By the way the Coloureds are the largest Afrikaans speaking group. So for ME this is not only the language of the oppressor but one that was stolen from us!
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