LL-L "Language varieties" 2008.11.15 (02) [E]

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 A=Afrikaans Ap=Appalachian B=Brabantish D=Dutch E=English F=Frisian
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L O W L A N D S - L - 16 November 2008 - Volume 01
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From: Elsie Zinsser <ezinsser at icon.co.za>
Subject: LL-L was "Language politics" 2008.11.14 (02) [A/E]

Hi all,

Paul, regarding the mutual non-understanding of Dutch by certain Afrikaans
speakers, this is the clue: "After English and German, I still find Dutch
and Afrikaans the easiest posts to read on this list."

Certain Afrikaans speakers without any third (Germanic) language studies
find the various tenses and flexions in Dutch quite difficult to grasp, as
it is for them with the English language, as second language. This is
especially true when their education was focused on scientific or technical
rather than on language studies.

It's preposterous to think it has anything to do with a deliberate refusal
on 'nationalistic' grounds!

Heck, if Petrus' theory was anything to go by, they would have jumped to the
opportunity to understand the cultural language of the 350 years' removed
homeland! :-)

Regards,

Elsie Zinsser

>Regarding the mutual intellibility of Afrikaans and Dutch, I find it
interesting that Dutch speakers/readers appear to have little problem with
Afrikaans; my experience in South Africa was that the reverse generally
didn't hold true - but I sometimes wondered if that was a deliberate refusal
to understand on "nationalistic" grounds.  I recall having a technical paper
in Dutch which I found fairly easy to work through even with my less than
perfect Afrikaans (I never studied Dutch); yet South Africans, both English
and Afrikaans speaking, seemed to find it very difficult.

•

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