LL-L "Language varieties" (was "Currency") 2002.03.15 (02) [A/E]

[Lowlands-L]

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 L O W L A N D S - L * 15.MAR.2002 (02) * ISSN 189-5582 * LCSN 96-4226
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 A=Afrikaans Ap=Appalachian D=Dutch E=English F=Frisian L=Limburgish
 LS=Low Saxon (Low German) S=Scots Sh=Shetlandic Z=Zeelandic (Zeeuws)
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From: "Marco Evenhuis" <evenhuis at zeelandnet.nl>
Subject: LL-L "Currency" 2002.03.14 (08) [E]

Mike Oettle wrote:

> I forget what coins were called by these names, but in the
> "Capie" dialect (an Afrikaans-English mixture spoken by Cape Coloureds,
> mainly in greater Cape Town, and sometimes rather grandly called
> "Kaaps") they spoke of oulap and stuiwer.

Mike states that 'Capie' is a mixture of Afrikaans and English. But I
think
that when Capie can be called a mixture of those two languages, Dutch
should
be called a mixed language as well; there are at least as much English
loans
in everyday speech here in Holland then there are in Capie. In fact,
during
my stay in Cape Town a few months ago, I found that I was better
understood
by the coloured population when I spoke my Dutch more 'purely', so with
leaving out English loans and using old-fashioned words. Certainly that
applied
even more for the white Afrikaans-speaking population.
A friend of mine said that the Western Cape, and Cape Town in
particular,
would make a grat holliday destination for Dutch people with roots in
Surinam or the Antilles: the intonation of 'Capie' and the Capie accent
in
Afrikaans is almost the same as the way Dutch is spoken by people from
Surinam, Aruba, Curacao...
White people told me that they sometimes have trouble understanding
Capies.
But I, a native speaker of Dutch and Zeeuws, not of Afrikaans, didn't
have
any trouble at all. Even in the Bo-Kaap area in Cape Town (a district
with a predominantly muslim population, called Cape Malays, and a very
strong own dialect of Afrikaans) I had no trouble at all understanding
people. In fact, I had to make more of an effort to understand
Afrikaners from places like Transvaal ('Valies') and the Northern
Province (or Limpopo Province), whose accent sounded very 'harsh' to
me...

But it's true that Capies tend to switch quite often between their own
form of Afrikaans and English. A bit like the 'Marolliens' of Brussels
(used to) do with French and their own Brabantish dialect. On a wall in
Cape Town I read lines like these:

'Hard did I suffer
just like a kaffer
never have I
a lekker poes genaai'.

It illustrates the code-switching mentioned above quite well. Plus it
tells us that _poes_ (German spelling _puus_) is in use in Capie as well
:-)

regards,

Marco

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