grammatical constraints and motivations for - University of the ...

Because the Coloured community of District Six was broken up and relocated as a
direct result of apartheid, its members developed negative attitudes towards
Afrikaans. Although Afrikaans was their home language, it was also the language
of the oppressor. As a result, many Coloureds adopted attitudes which were
negative toward Afrikaner nationalism, but sympathetic towards the British
administration (Ponelis, 1993). In addition to this, Ponelis (1993) argues that the
favourability of English over Afrikaans has been influenced by the fact that there
was a shortage of Afrikaans-medium educational institutions, intermarriage
between British immigrants and Coloured Afrikaans speakers, as well as the
apartheid government. Apartheid, therefore, led to more favourable attitudes
toward English and provides a distinct example of linguistic nationalism.
Webb and Kembo-Sure (2000: 17) comment on the effect of apartheid on
Afrikaans and the Coloured community, in particular:
Although the language has deep historical roots in the country’s Coloured (formerly
Khoikhoi and slave) communities, it was appropriated by the white political intelligentsia
of the past as an instrument of political mobilization. In the process it was ideologized
and mythologized into a ‘White Man’s Language.’ In the process of its ‘standardization,’
its non-white speakers were re-classified as speakers of non-standard Afrikaans, the
language was purged (supposedly purified) of foreign elements (especially English
elements), and it became a symbol of a particular socio-cultural identity (that of the
Afrikaner).
Thus, Afrikaans became a ‘white man’s language’ as a result of political control.
Afrikaans, as it was originally spoken, was suddenly declared non-standard,
containing too many borrowings, while the Afrikaans which was ‘purified’ by
white Afrikaners became the standard variety. In a sense, this means that standard
Afrikaans, as it is spoken today, is not the original variety, but rather the result of
a political ideology.
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