South African English

I have a Blogging buddy and very good friend in Upper New York State.  He lived in NOLA once but says he was blown out of there by Katrina and eventually landed in Billary’s adopted State when they moved there on her first phase of getting into the White House.

 This dear friend always enquired about my Dutch Origins because he is interested in linguistics; he is actually very sharp in it; heck, he can quote French and Italian in English.

 Now, if you know linguistics you will know that Afrikaans is the South African derivation of Dutch, but there is a lot more to it.  Dutch, Flemish, Danish, and also German and a host of others are part of the family known as the Germanic languages.  I explained it to him in reply to an email.  He is my favorite emailer buddy.  For your convenience I place my email reply in Italics:

 The Danes and Netherlands have a lot in common, more so than the German side, and then the Flemish is even closer than the Dutch in certain words and expressions to Afrikaans, the latter having the original Dutch settler base but rapidly mixed, first with the lingo franca of the French settlers plus all the others as they stepped ashore in the Deepest South on the Globe over more than one century following the first Dutch.  The country was for a while a similar melting pot of languages much like you have in the States.

 However, and that is the difference with your current situation; whereas the Brit followed right on the heels of the Dutch and the others soon afterwards, all[except the French] readily switched to form an African English, the new Caucasian settlers [yes, believe it or not] for a while outnumbered the blacks in Sub-Galagharri [that’s the new PC for pure Afrikaans Kalahari [a desert part in our North West] which in the entire mix forced the blacks to learn some of the language patterns of whatever the white man brought with him; the white man in turn had to adjust his language of origin to the blacks who came down from the north in search of food or protection from the other blacks that were chasing them to steal their cattle and their wives; men were killed, no prisoners taken.

 Out of all that [you figure it] Afrikaans was born.  The puritan white Afrikaner won’t admit it and a good few may secretly want to kill any other whitey for the admission that many of the words in our new language were adapted from whatever the white guy understood from his conversations with the black guy and what the latter was saying.  And of course, some natural biological activities“ across the color line” occurred at an early stage; probably during the same time George Washington was spreading his genetics around a bit.

 Who knows what I am; you tell me.

 I am developing a theory and it is well grounded in research though it is most Non PC to express it that the somewhat larger early white mix stopped the extinction or complete annihilation of the black tribes in Sub-Galaghari [whatever the darn name is].  “What was left of the SA Black tribes today except the black skin is in reality as African as much as you are one”, I said to my email friend.

 A very good example but one that is not openly discussed is the different English spoken by Black Zimbabwe just north of us in black South Africa.  You can argue your head off but you will find only one reason for it; the English missionary in Uncle Robert’s Zimbabwe spoke the Queen or King’s English to her subjects and they just had to damn well learn it.  Our blacks never mastered English and still can’t speak it but they are trying to introduce home language education in our schools.  White South Africans just raise their eyebrows and ask “Which one of the eleven black SA languages do you want to use in teaching maths?”

 You must look at the size of the continent; consider how many Indian tribes you had killing each other and try work out what would have been today if you did not protect the black slaves from the Indian warriors.  It’s not all that cynical as it may sound to some.

 Then you elected Obama?  Our Black population had been in power for more than 14 years at the time and had not made a single effort to learn how to speak English.  In fact, they had started burning down the Afrikaans and Dutch schools since 1976 and you should remember who was running for President in your Country at that time.

 I could never understand why President Nixon even bothered to burglar Watergate [unless he wanted to prevent another Chicago 1968] but it was even more difficult to even begin to comprehend why you wanted to get the right President for the time out of the way [that was an awfully BEEG mistake], and thus leaving the door open for Jimmy.

 Lordy …. Lordy?!  What did you expect?”

 Email quote done; rest my case.

 

Ike Jakson

Saka Americoon in Americus GA

ikejakson@gmail.com

 

Tags: African-Africans, Colonialism, current-events, Government, History of the World today, Languages of the World, Obama.Politics, Russia, The English Language