Afrikaans

“The language of the rural people is as little pure Dutch as the language of German farmers is pure German. The men have a fulsome speech and the women folk assumed ways of talking that are truly ridiculous.”

“He had lost his mother tongue almost completely and acquired the mutilated Dutch of the colonists.”

“The main purpose of the following collection, as one can immediately infer from the title of our work, was to eradicate from the Dutch spoken in this Colony, if it can be referred to by that name, words and expressions which are either entirely strange or mutilated, or at least to indicate in which way this may be done.”

“You can trust me that the plat Hollands is read more among us farmers than that which Changuion wants to teach us in his booklets.”

“The language of the Cape! … As if the miserable, bastard jargon, which is the vernacular of this country, is worthy of the name of language at all. … The poverty of expression in this jargon is such, that we defy any man to express thought in it above the merest common-place … There can be no literature with such a language, for poor as it is, it is hardly a written one … Let, then, your language and your nationality go, and believe us, you need not fear for your religion.”

“People tell you that Afrikaans isn't a language, because it is composed of Dutch, French, Hottentot, etc. However, the manner in which the English language is patched together is wisely hidden.”

“True Afrikaners, we call on you to acknowledge with us that the Afrikaans language is the mother tongue that our Dear Lord gave us; and to make a stand with us through thick and thin for our language; and not to rest before our language is generally acknowledged as the national language of our country.”

“...a number of jokers near Cape Town [who planned] to reduce the 'plat Hollands' of the street and kitchen to a written language and perpetuated it. They [were] carrying their joke well. They [had] a newspaper, [had] published a history of the Colony, an almanac, and to crown the joke – a grammar.”

“Poor in the number of its words, weak in its inflections, wanting in accuracy of meaning and incapable in expressing ideas connected with the higher spheres of thought, it will have to undergo great modification before it will be able to produce a literature worthy of the name.”

“[They] who … see no possibility of maintaining, or, rather, of restoring among the mass of the old Colonists the language of Holland, would keep out English by trying to make the lingo and slang of the lowest Hottentots the language of these people – even South Africa.”

“The protection of our mother tongue must be the most important consideration of such a Bond, for language and nation are one, and those who do not see this as objective, had better not become members of our bond”

“For intellectual training Africander Dutch offers no scope, for it has no literature and a very poor vocabulary. For internal intercourse and as a trade-medium English is superior to it; and for foreign trade it stands nowhere.”

“The general does not use pure Afrikaans in his speeches, nor a Dutch that can easily be confused with the language of a Dutchman, but a kind of Afrikaans with Dutch inflections that he inserts haphazardly without any particular plan, so that every now and then, by pure chance, he gets one of them in the right place.”

“For how long shall we entertain two thoughts? If Dutch is our language, why do we not speak it? If Afrikaans is our language, why do we not write it?”

“The Provincial Council accepted my motion that enables Afrikaans as a permissible medium up to the fourth standard.”

“Be loyal unto death to your traditions, to your religion, to your language and to your people.”

“...a bridge between the great, luminous West and magical Africa … Our task lies in the current and future implementation of this gleaming vehicle ...”

“Were it not that Afrikaans literature glorifies white supremacy, and were it not for the unutterable evil this literature breathes, one would simply dismiss it as inane, a crushing bore.”

“The recent strikes by schools against the use of Afrikaans as a medium of instruction is a sign of demonstration against schools' systematised to producing 'good industrial boys' for the powers that be... We therefore resolve to totally reject the use of Afrikaans as a medium of instruction, to fully support the students who took the stand in the rejection of this dialect [and] also to condemn the racially separated education system.”

“The government is prepared to be as accommodating as possible as far as the use of Afrikaans at African schools is concerned. ... In the white areas of South Africa [however, including Soweto], where the government erects the buildings, grants the subsidies and pays the teachers, it is our right to decide on language policy. The same applies to schools in areas where there is no compulsory education. Why are pupils sent to schools if [the government's] language policy does not suit them?”

“Unfortunately Afrikaans acquired certain historic connotations that resulted in its rejection by the black man, and these are political connotations.”

“And Afrikaans, this child from the soil of Africa, has already become an instrument for millions of people – yes, for more than just the Afrikaner … God's plan, however, had been the creation of another civilization with a new language from Africa … Afrikaans and this beautiful southern land are undeniably grown together.”

“Afrikaans is a language that grew and developed from the soil of South Africa, aided by a variety of languages and cultures in our land, rooted in the search for an own identity and freedom. Its power and hope for the future has never been based on special privilege; but rather as one of the languages of South Africa which will have to meet the future shoulder to shoulder, with mutual respect and equal rights.”

“At present local English does not seem to have any particular social value, and thus there is no apparent reason for its speakers to wish to preserve its distinctive features. This is not true of non-standard Afrikaans, which is valued as warm, intimate, and a sign of membership of the community.”

“...architect Jan van Wijk’s remarkable 1975 tribute to one of the world’s ugliest languages makes, if nothing else, a great picnic spot on the way to the wine lands of Franschhoek and Stellenbosch.”

“At school, Afrikaans was a compulsory subject that I disliked intensely; it was a harsh language, like the people who spoke it. [...] In my father’s shop, ... I found ... to my surprise, that I was beginning to enjoy the language. [The] warm straightforwardness and ... earthiness in many of these people ... was richly and idiomatically expressed in their speech. And, although I have never advanced beyond being able to speak a sort of kombuistaal, I delighted in our conversations.”

“Few languages have engendered as much controversy, with regard to both historical development and place in modern society.”

“This is why Afrikaans-exclusive or even Afrikaans-dominant white schools and universities represent a serious threat to race relations in South Africa. You simply cannot prepare young people for dealing with the scars of our violent past without creating optimal opportunities in the educational environment for living and learning together.”

“Afrikaans is a cancer that must be destroyed.”

“... socio-political history often casts Afrikaans as the language of racists, oppressors and unreconstructed nationalists. But [Afrikaans] also bears the imprint of a fierce tradition of anti-imperialism, anti-colonialism, of an all-embracing humanism and anti-apartheid activism.”

“The world [of 2017] looks completely different than in 1937. Then, communication was limited, and the introduction of radio – in Afrikaans – changed the world.”

“A language without a commercial value will die.”

“The youth culture grabs the young language by its foreskin and gives it its first democratic climax!”

“It is unbelievable and / or unfortunate that even until today in this constitutional democracy we still have a society that sees nothing wrong with a language that was used as a tool of segregation and discrimination during apartheid which 90 percent of South African[s] bemoan; a language whose legacy is sorrow and tears to the majority of whom it was not their mother tongue.”

“By the time the protesters outside Hoërskool Overvaal lobbed a petrol bomb at the police, it was clear that something as simple as a school’s language policy could still inflame deadly passions 41 years after the Soweto Uprising against Afrikaans in black schools. I could not help thinking: what is it about Afrikaans that brings out the worst in us?”

“The courageous fight of the Afrikaans newspaper Vrye Weekblad against the apartheid state, its unearthing of apartheid secrets during the states of emergency in Afrikaans needs a firmer place in our Struggle history. The vicious responses to Max du Preez, Jacques Pauw and Vrye Weekblad journalists by the apartheid state, where the courts were used to close it down, is part of the proud resistance history of Afrikaans.”

“I publicly and in my personal capacity disagree with the phasing out of Afrikaans as one of the mediums of teaching at the University of Pretoria. As a country, you are shooting yourselves down. You will regret it in 30 years’ time.”

“There was some misunderstanding between ourselves and the minority groups in the country, to be quite frank, especially people that are speaking Afrikaans, because the previous regime invested a lot of resources and energy in them. Our coloured communities feel marginalised, not loved, feel they are on the periphery.”

“Everyone knows that the DA has failed to stand up for Afrikaans language and cultural rights despite their guarantee in the Constitution.”