WHAT IS FORTY FOUR?

Following on from yesterday's post about the longest word in the English language, Afrikaans has a few of its own word combinations. Today, I begin to explore the Afrikaans language and how it fits into the international constructs of Germanic origin and add in a tidbit about word combinations and constructs.

The Dutch settled in The Cape of Good Hope, South Africa in 1652 when food gardens were established to provide passing ships with fresh food and water on their long journey around the Cape Point from Europe to Asia. My paternal ancestors were among these early settlers.

While the settlers started out speaking Hoér Nederlands, this evolved over time into a simplified form of Dutch which became known as Afrikaans. The Dutch viewed Afrikaans as a type of 'poor relative' due to the inclusion of influences from Malay, Portuguese, and indigenous African languages, and it was considered by European Dutch speakers as less prestigious or "corrupted". 

Afrikaans was formally recognised as a separate language on May 8, 1925 and with that recognition came a concerted effort to further develop literature, media, and an educational system. This is now well-established in South Africa.

Until as late as the 1960s and 1970s, people tended to construe Afrikaans as simply a language 'for South Africa', whereas 'English was for the world'. This belief has been largely dispelled with the extensive international travel in the past few decades. In the global academic and linguistic community, Afrikaans is now studied and respected as an independent language with unique linguistic features. Contrary to the original view of Afrikaans as inferior, the simplification of Dutch grammar is now largely considered to be a case study in language evolution.

From an international perspective, the Afrikaans language has Dutch as its stem language which is, interestingly, the same stem as the Flemish language, predominantly spoken in Flanders, Belgium. Even more interesting is that, considering that the languages developed separately on two different continents and that Flemish developed in close proximity to Holland, Afrikaans and Flemish are estimated to share approximately 70-80% lexical similarity. This means that a significant portion of their vocabulary is either identical or very closely related in form and meaning. 

During the times that I have visited Belgium, I have been consistently amazed to find that I understand Flemish almost faultlessly. This attests to the significant similarity between Afrikaans and Flemish. English is my home language but I am fully fluent in Afrikaans. I find Flemish to be a more gentle dialect and easy to understand, perhaps due to my English accent when I speak Afrikaans.

No poem today but a song and this is where we come to interesting word constructs in Afrikaans (and English) as further examples of the Germanic tradition of linking words to make one word. 

Cape Buffaloes, South Africa

Tweebuffelsmeteenskootmorsdoodgeskietfontein is a farm in the North West province of South Africa. 

Tweebuffelsmeteenskootmorsdoodgeskietfontein, with a letter count of 44, is the longest place name in South Africa (and indeed Africa), and the fourth longest place name anywhere in the world. The name, which follows a common format for Afrikaans-language place names in South Africa, is literally translated as 'Two buffaloes killed stone dead with one shot fountain'. The more general translation is  "The spring where two buffaloes were cleanly killed with a single shot”. 

The well-known South African singer and songwriter, Anton Goosen, wrote a song entitled “Tweebuffelsmeteenskootmorsdoodgeskietfontein”. This is on his album, Lappiesland ('Patchwork Country'). 

Here's the song which may sound really strange to those who don't understand Afrikaans but it certainly has a distinctly Afrikaans beat. https://youtu.be/-GLcsx5wsvE?si=ZSjKM1YtchcnSp-T.

It's not only Afrikaans which combines words in South Africa. The town of Hotazel, which was founded in the 1950s has also become part of South African folklore. Hotazel is a real place and the name is derived from a play on the words 'hot as hell'. The temperatures in Hotazel may not be as high as some places in the Kuruman area of South Africa but when they regularly reach nearly 40Celsius (104 Fahrenheit) who's arguing?

Have a wonderful weekend and I'll check in on Monday.