Afrikaans

[Sally Thomason]

About Afrikaans as a creole or not: in a 1988 co-authored book
I called Afrikaans a "semi-creole".  Two years later, within
a single week, I got two letters from Afrikaans specialists:
one said "liked your book, but I'm afraid you're wrong about
Afrikaans -- it's clearly not a creole at all, it's instead
a direct descendant of Dutch"; the other said, "liked your
book, but I'm afraid you're wrong about Afrikaans -- it's
definitely a creole".  (I'm paraphrasing these letters, not
actually quoting them.)  I no longer think that "semi-creole"
is a useful concept (or "creoloid"), but I do still think that
Afrikaans lies somewhere in the fuzzy borderland between
creole and Dutch descendant heavily influenced by other
languages in its course of development.  It has a lot more
lexifier-language (in this case Dutch) grammar than your
basic creole, for instance, though possibly not more than
Reunionese or maybe even Bajan in Barbados; but its drastic
restructuring over a relatively short period of time hardly
looks like ordinary language change, either, even with quite
a bit of contact-induced change.

  -- Sally Thomason