Wilmot James: Where did this story that Afrikaans is a white person’s language come from?
Professor and Senior Research Scholar Wilmot James wrote an article in Daily Maverick
The sterile debate about whether Afrikaans is an indigenous language (of course it is) or not defines the language as a problem rather than as an opportunity to craft and shape an inclusive South African expressionism.
My Athlone High School geography and English teacher Pat Wagner once (in the late 1960s) made the memorable claim that “a language belongs to those who speak it.” Although institutional entities played a major role in adding value, language does not belong to those who fund the dictionaries and other means of codifying and documenting the etymology of words, or to the poets and writers of fiction, or to the non-fiction authors and journalists. No, by Wagner’s reckoning, language ownership is vested in not just some but in all those who speak it, and we must surely concur.
Born in Paarl, my first language is, unsurprisingly, Afrikaans. My mouth may open in English, but I tend to think in Afrikaans. I am told that on the rare occasion when I get angry, or want to make a really wicked joke, I staccato in Afrikaans. I love to listen to and really enjoy someone who speaks Afrikaans really well (and for that I miss Jakes Gerwel). I may even dream in Afrikaans, I cannot recall.
Read the full article here.