Why do south africans speak afrikaans

For older generations, the language still symbolises the brutality of apartheid regime and a time they would rather forget. YouTuber Lasizwe Dambuza recently tried to draw a fresh audience to his channel of over , subscribers by releasing a series of comedy sketches about young black South Africans struggling to learn the language at school. He then launched a series of sketches in which he played a black woman struggling to date a white Afrikaans speaker.

Lasizwe, whose first language is Zulu, now plans to branch out into other languages to continue to reach even more South Africans with his channel. First it was Zulu, then Tswana had its moment, and now everyone wants to speak Xhosa, but I think soon it will come back to Zulu. White South Africans retain the vast majority of wealth and financial influence in the country and are an ethnic minority, making up just 8.

Although the system of apartheid formally ended at the start of the s, its legacy today has been largely to continue to keep South Africans geographically segregated by race, with exceptional pockets of cosmopolitan blending in some urban areas of cities such as Johannesburg. As a result, most white South Africans live in close-knit suburban or rural communities where they rarely come into contact with their non-white fellow citizens outside of transactional settings with domestic workers, in shops or in restaurants.

They tend not to speak any black African languages. Is Afrikaans' future in rural pockets that resist the seismic changes in the country? Credit: Getty Images. We make it easy for you to plan your trip online. We have some useful tips for tourists and then start planning your trip with our introduction to South Africa. South Africa. I want to go to Why book with us?

Strictest card verification in the industry. Your card is safe with us. We don't store credit card details so they can't be compromised. Responsible travellers buy local. We're proudly South African! Protection from online fraud: all property owners are verified. Your privacy guaranteed. We won't share your contact details. The language is anchored in the Dutch brought over by the early colonizers, but it has a simpler grammatical structure and more sensical spelling than its parent language does.

It draws on a hodge-podge of elements from the tongues of Portuguese and French traders and colonizers, from indigenous Khoisan and Bantu languages, and from languages like Malay that were brought to Africa through the slave trade with Asia.

Though historically the language was weaponized as a symbol of Afrikaner white nationalism to the exclusion of other racial populations, Afrikaans sprang up in and permeated non-white communities, who used a vernacular distinct enough from the white variety that it set them apart and allowed them to build a sense of solidarity within their communities.

In fact, according to a census , the majority of those who use Afrikaans at home are part of this group — just over half of the total native speakers of the tongue.

Did you know that Afrikaans has loaned words to English? The English brought their language with them in their arrival to the Cape starting in , and though they were eventually forced out by the Dutch settlers and their descendants, English had ample time to become established in the Cape Colony and beyond. The tongue is increasingly becoming the go-to language for official business and communications. But it is only spoken by about 10 percent of the population natively at home, or about 5 million people.

South African English has its own peculiarities and nuances that distinguish it from the English spoken in the rest of the world. It is also argued that varieties of Afrikaans such as Cape Afrikaans are spoken by Coloured people and contributed greatly to the formation of the language.

Other groups who advanced language contact included Eastern political exiles between and , political prisoners were exiled to the Cape from countries such as Indonesia, India and Sri Lanka. In order to place these influences into context, a brief overview of the development of the language is provided in the following paragraphs.

The indigenes encounter Jan van Riebeeck Image source. Meurant , [54] Giliomee cites this book as the first secular Afrikaans book. Furthermore, various nineteenth century political events? This policy was enforced in the church, in schools and the civil service. The fight for Afrikaans coincided with the rise Afrikaner nationalism. The Fellowship perceived Afrikaans as the language of the White Afrikaners.

Stephanus Jacobus S. Willemse cites the consequences of Afrikaans constructed as a White language by, for example, Afrikaner language nationalists such as the Fellowship of True Afrikaners: [97]. In denying the commonality of their fellow Afrikaans speakers who were descendants of slaves, indigenous people or simply poor, they were elevating the language to a narrow ethnic nationalist cause.

However, several authors argue that the language does not exclusively signify suppression and racism. While our recent sociopolitical history often casts Afrikaans as the language of racists, oppressors and unreconstructed nationalists, the language also bears the imprint of a fierce tradition of anti-imperialism, anti-colonialism, of an all-embracing humanism and antiapartheid activism.

Similarly, Sonn highlights this ambiguity faced by Coloured Afrikaans speakers on the back cover of a book which focuses on the role of Coloured Afrikaans speakers in the development of Afrikaans : they speak the language and were oppressed in the language.

The next section of this article focuses on Afrikaans utilised as a language to express resistance by slaves and Coloured people during the historical eras of colonialism, Afrikaner nationalism, Apartheid, and the post-Apartheid era. Resisting colonialism: the ghoemaliedjies [ghoema songs] and the Genadendal printing press.

The earliest forms of resistance to colonial linguistic influence include ghoema songs that form part of Cape Muslim slave culture and texts originating from the printing press of the first South African mission station, Genadendal. Firstly, the ghoemaliedjies of the Cape Muslim slave culture are explored. As stated previously, slaves and Eastern political exiles arrived in , and between and respectively.

Indonesian prisoners transferred their literary traditions such as the pantun to the Cape and [] the ghoemaliedjie shares likenesses with this form of song. Ghoemaliedjies formed a significant part of slave culture. In general, ghoemaliedjies are overtly satirical: they were used by slaves to comment on the colonists. Slaves sung ghoemaliedjies on their annual picnics which slave owners were required to provide.

Other texts that oppose colonialism include a monthly journal De Bode van Genadendal, and a novella Benigna van Groenekloof of Mamre, , both printed at the printing press in Genadendal initially called Baviaanskloof []. Genadendal is the oldest mission station in South Africa, [] established in [] by the missionary Georg Schmidt.

Genadendal Mission Station c.