Afrikaans as a lingua franca in South Africa: the politics of change
-
Kay McCormick
Abstract
Afrikaans has been a lingua franca throughout its existence. Its early development took place mainly in and around Cape Town, in a situation of intensive language contact between indigenous Khoekhoe, Dutch settlers, and slaves. Since most people learned it informally, often from other non-native speakers, and since the Cape was relatively isolated from conservative linguistic influences, the language changed a great deal. Until the late nineteenth century, there was no concerted attempt to regulate it. Regulation and standardization occurred in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, at a time of great hostility between white speakers of Dutch / Afrikaans and the British colonial authorities. The standard dialect was based on a variety spoken by white Afrikaners. After its declaration as an official language alongside English in 1925, political and cultural institutions promoted its use in all domains by all South Africans. The Afrikaner nationalist government, which took power in 1948, made renewed efforts to enforce the use of the language. The language was strongly associated with apartheid, and many of its speakers feared that it would suer in the new democracy. It does have less prominence in public life, but is still being used as a lingua franca.
© Walter de Gruyter
Articles in the same Issue
- Introduction
- Lingua franca communication past and present
- Restandardizing localized Englishes: aspirations and limitations
- English as a lingua franca: Singapore
- Standardization and self-regulation in an international speech community: the case of Esperanto
- Afrikaans as a lingua franca in South Africa: the politics of change
- The effect of Bahasa Indonesia as a lingua franca on the Javanese system of speech levels and their functions
- Signaling and preventing misunderstanding in English as lingua franca communication
- In and on their own terms: the “habitat factor” in English as a lingua franca interactions
- Book reviews
Articles in the same Issue
- Introduction
- Lingua franca communication past and present
- Restandardizing localized Englishes: aspirations and limitations
- English as a lingua franca: Singapore
- Standardization and self-regulation in an international speech community: the case of Esperanto
- Afrikaans as a lingua franca in South Africa: the politics of change
- The effect of Bahasa Indonesia as a lingua franca on the Javanese system of speech levels and their functions
- Signaling and preventing misunderstanding in English as lingua franca communication
- In and on their own terms: the “habitat factor” in English as a lingua franca interactions
- Book reviews
