Ek Praat Afrikaans

(I speak Afrikaans)

It is May and it's cold! I am not used to the opposite season thing here in SA yet but I'm sure that will change. When I arrived in late January, it was really hot and I never imagined that I would ever be needing a jacket.

I thought that today I would write a bit about my learning Afrikaans. Back during my training we had learned a couple lines of Afrikaans to introduce ourselves. Our main focuses were on Zulu, Siswati, Ndebele, and Tsonga; not many people in PC SA speak Afrikaans. There are many reasons for this, but a big one is that most volunteers live in villages where there are no Afrikaans-speaking people.

The history of Afrikaans is really complicated but interesting. The language is a descendant of German and Dutch and was originally brought by the European settlers who came to SA. Forgive me if any information here is not the most accurate; I'm kind of writing this off of the bits of information I've seen and read over here. The language was influenced by many immigrants, including Asians, English, French, and German speakers. Afrikaans, therefore, has many borrowed words and sounds from eveywhere in the world.

Things get complicated with the Anglo-Boer War in the beginning of the 20th century and the subsequent rise of the Afrikaaner-controlled government. Much of the prevailing attitude was that Afrikaans should be spoken to Afrikaaners, not English. Blacks had to learn or at least understand Afrikaans; many people still say "thank you" to me in Afrikaans, even though they know I speak English.

Now, in the new SA, the Afrikaans language is in a strange place. It is seen as the language of apartheid and many people I've talked to do not like the language at all; they prefer English as a second language (after Zulu or Sepedi). However, many schools, especially ones with a large number of white children, still teach Afrikaans. Afrikaans is still widely spoken in the Cape province.

I am starting to learn Afrikaans for several reasons: many people I know speak it, my supervisor speaks it, and I might be moving to a school where they teach in Afrikaans. I think that this experience will give me a better understanding of the Afrikaaner perspective of SA; I've already talked to many of them who feel their culture, language, and lifestyle is under attack by the new government. That will be a whole different entry altogether.

As for now I'm listening to an Afrikaans radio station, reading children's books, and studying from language books. The sounds in Afrikaans are similar to German and it sounds so cool when you yell! I hope you are all doing well and hope to hear from you soon.