"Oumense het blotvoet gebruik": Nederlandse taalresten in de variëteiten van het Afrikaans

Abstract

English Title: "Oumense het blotvoet gebruik": Dutch relics in the regional varieties of Afrikaans

English Abstract

The Bureau of the WAT has developed a survey of all varieties of Afrikaans. One part thereof is the survey of Dutch language relics in the Afrikaans regional varieties which is discussed here. From earlier surveys it has been shown that many Dutch relics are present; the Dutch language and in particular the dialect from Holland from the 16th and 17th centuries have had a strong influence on (the origin of) Afrikaans. Questionnaires were used to check with 183 informants from the Northern and the Western Cape whether Dutch relics are still present in the varieties they use, on the phonetic as well as the lexical level.

The survey has shown that Dutch relics are found on both levels. In the pronunciation especially there is still [ø] where standard Afrikaans has [e], and less often [y] is found instead of [œy]. It is noticeable that the [«i]/[i] variation is present less frequently, while in Dutch a parallel development in the diphtongisation of [y] and [i] has occurred. Afrikaans has seemingly undergone an independent development in this regard. Most phonetic relics were found in Namaqualand, particularly among informants with little schooling, and somewhat more among women than among men.

On a lexical level the results were quite different. There are still many Dutch relics present in word meaning as well as in knowledge of idioms. The Muslim community of Cape Town scores particularly high in this regard, while phonetic relics were scarcely found. Informants with higher education levels score more highly in this regard than those with lower schooling or less, and among men more lexical relics are recorded than among women.

Lastly, both on a lexical level and on a phonetic level, a number of indirect results were gathered from the survey which also point to the presence of Dutch language relics.

Keywords: woordeboek van die afrikaanse taal; inventorying of relics; use of language description; questionnaire; influence of dutch on afrikaans; phonetic language relics; sound variation; lexical language relics; word meaning; idioms; correlations with sex; schooling and age; indirect results