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Afrikaans: 'n nuttige stuk gereedskap (AV 5:2)
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Inhoudsoorsig


Afrikaans: 'n nuttige stuk gereedskap

Leo van den Heever   lewer -- in Engels -- uitspraak oor die waarde van die maklike, moderne taal Afrikaans as 'n nuttige stuk 
opvoedkundige gereedskap. "Dit moet juis in Engels geskryf word, anders sal persone tans aan bewind dit net nie lees nie!" meen sy. Engelse 
koerante het dié stuk vir plasing geweier.

AFRIKAANS is the language in which my father, Toon van den Heever, penned   poetry and tales. He helped to broaden its scope with words 
appropriate to legal practice. He was one of the first South African judges to write judgments in Afrikaans. They had been few and far 
between before his appointment to the Bench.

Afrikaans is also my own mother tongue. As instinctively as I breathe, I spoke Afrikaans to my babies, and to every animal that ever became 
part of my life, whether horse, dog, cat or parrot.

It is a language that is easy to master, yet capable of expressing with clarity a veritable universe of thoughts and feelings. I have met 
Americans and Russians who after a few months' study have spoken Afrikaans fluently. One can become an attorney, advocate, doctor, 
mechanic, nurse, engineer, architect, theologian, and doubtless much more, through medium Afrikaans. It is perhaps the youngest language to 
have been born, and to have done so and been able to grow at the "right" time; so that it brought little redundant historical baggage 
along, but grew with the immense growth in knowledge that has expanded world-wide since the industrial revolution and more particularly 
since World War II.

My father impressed upon me, when I was little more than a toddler, that education is an asset of inestimable worth: no one can take it 
away from you, and if your acquired knowledge enables you to cater for society's needs, the chances are that you will always have a roof 
over your head and food on your plate. His own education was delayed by die Anglo-Boer War, and achieved despite poverty, by means of hard-
earned money and merited bursaries.

Against such a background, it is understandable that my own children describe me as a sucker for an educational toy; and that I regard as 
the greatest sins of the previous and present governments those perpetrated by discouraging children from striving for a worthwhile 
education: whether by affording to some, only free schooling of inferior quality (though people with PQ as well as IQ -- perseverance 
quotient and intelligence -- more often than not use hurdles as stepping stones); or calling them to battle with slogans such as 
"Liberation before education". Or not recognising a useful educational tool as such, to be used to the full.

Which brings me back to Afrikaans.

My impression, based on what I read in the newspapers of proposed legislation relating particularly, but not only, to education, is that 
the present government is intent upon phasing Afrikaans out of public life, and conducting all governmental or quasi-governmental business 
in English -- presumably on the supposition that English is a world language.

The problems with English as a so-called "world language" seem to me to be twofold.

It is perhaps very widely understood as a written language; as Latin was for centuries. But as a spoken language people have problems with 
it. I personally would rather wait for a newspaper report of the relevant speech, than strain to hear what many of our present-day 
governmental figures actually say; because the pronunciation foxes me as much as a cockney's sayings often leave me guessing as to the 
content of his purported "communication". And communication is, after all, what language is all about.

It is not so readily correctly used, whether verbally or in writing, by those for whom it is a second language, because of the baggage it 
brings from the past; which includes a grammatical formalism that Afrikaans lacks. I refer, of course, to "I am, you are, he is, I was, we 
were, I sing, he sings" and so on. Afrikaans is easy. Almal is, of was. The same sort of thing applies to plurals: mouse, mice, house, 
houses. I quote from a so-called "essay" someone dropped into the Inbox of my PC, to amuse:

"Let's face it, English is a crazy language. English muffins weren't invented in England nor French fries in France. Sweetmeats are candies 
while sweetbreads, which aren't sweet, are meat. We take English for granted but if we explore it's" [which should, incidentally be its] 
"paradoxes, we find that quicksand can work slowly, boxing rings are square, and a guineapig is neither from Guinea nor a pig. ... Doesn't 
it seem crazy that you can make amends but not amend, that you comb through annals of history but not a single annal? ... If teachers 
taught, why didn't preachers praught? If a vegetarian eats vegetables, what does a humanitarian eat? If you wrote a letter, perhaps you 
bote your tongue? Sometimes I think that all the English speakers should be committed to an asylum for the verbally insane. In what 
language do people recite at a play and play at a recital? Ship by truck and send cargo by ship? Have noses that run and feet that smell? 
... You have to marvel at the unique lunacy of a language in which an alarm goes off by going on ... the stars are visible, but lights 
invisible, when they are out?"

Not to mention, of course, the major lunacy of a "system" of spelling according to which words like the following look alike but are 
pronounced differently: though, enough, plough, tough, trough ... (the sort of thing which misled me, fairly new to the language, into 
naming my first chameleon "Cholmondly" ...)

I am under the impression that one cannot become a doctor, architect, engineer etc., in any one of the indigenous languages spoken in South 
Africa, other than Afrikaans. The appropriate vocabularies do not exist. if I am wrong on this score, cadit quaestio. If I am correct, and 
blacks wishing to qualify as professionals are compelled to learn a second language before being able to learn to become a mechanic, 
electrician, attorney, etc., why on earth not make it easier for them by encouraging them to acquire the most modern and expressive 
language available, which is Afrikaans?

As a sucker for an educational toy, I hope the authorities will not succeed in killing off such a useful one as Afrikaans can be. I found 
it interesting during a recent visit to the land of my birth, Namibia, where official policy is and has been for a number of years that the 
only official language is to be English, that wherever one walks among the ordinary people in the capital, the languages I heard most 
commonly spoken were Afrikaans, and then German. Should make one think, not so? Regter Leo van den Heever   is afgetree, maar dien nog op 
die Appèlbank van Lesotho.

Terug na bo

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Terug na bo   /// Afrikaans Vandag -- April 1998 /// Afrikaanssprekendes, word onmisbaar! (AV 5:2) /// Ywer uit onverwagte oord (AV 5:2) 
/// Produktiewe aksies moet daaruit voortkom (AV 5:2) /// Leeskring-inspirasie (AV 5:2) /// Een breë Afrikaanse front (AV 5:2) /// Die 
antwoord op: Hoe leer ek Afrikaans? (AV 5:2) /// Op die stoep gaan hulle skater van plesier (AV 5:2) /// Afrikaans: 'n nuttige stuk 
gereedskap (AV 5:2) /// Afrikaans vir die Afrikane? (AV 5:2) /// Afrikaanse bewegings moet besin oor oogmerke (AV 5:2) /// 'n Woordlint van 
land tot land (AV 5:2) /// Afrikaans gryp uitdagings (AV 5:2) /// Hoe stewig is die handevat? (AV 5:2) /// 'n Gelukkige huis lok vele 
vriende (AV 5:2) /// In die ban van Karoo-Afrikaans (AV 5:2) /// Die wel en wee van 'n politieke tolk (AV 5:2) /// 'n Reis van 
selfontdekking (AV 5:2) /// Nederlands wil Kaaps raakvat (AV 5:2) /// Taalvriendskap is nou moontlik (AV 5:2) /// 'n Briljante seun, Meyer 
(AV 5:2) /// Sonde met die Cravense bure (AV 5:2) /// PALJAS, paljas is die as nou af? (AV 5:2) /// Die smeerstorie (AV 5:2) ///

