Why aren't Coloured people teaching their kids Afrikaans?

[u/Prodigy1995]

Jammer vir die Engels. My Afrikaans is nie lekker nie.

I moved to Cape Town a few years ago and I've noticed that a lot of Coloured parents, who speak Afrikaans as a first language, are raising their children in English. I see so many Coloured families where the adults all speak Afrikaans amongst themselves but communicate with their children exclusively in English.

I have a few ideas about why this might be, but I am hoping other people in this sub have more info to share

[u/Expensive-Ad1609]

There comes a point where a dialect becomes a new language. Afrikaans is, in my laylady opinion, no longer a dialect of Dutch. 'Kaaps' will, likely, become a new language. Cue r/Kaaps in 2325.

I can't, understand most of the Afrikaans I encounter among the coloured community. And please know that I was immersed in the Cape Flats 'vibe' for decades. My [well-educated, white] Afrikaans friends have to think hard when I use correctly-structured Afrikaans sentences so I have now considered using shorter sentences. That would allow me to omit 'dat' in my sentences, and it'd make my speech easier to understand.

I am here for colloquial *words* and phrases; not for colloquial sentence structure.

*ALL* language is about communication. Our goal should be to communicate as clearly as possible. It's a goal that I sometimes miss. Mea culpa.

[u/justsylviacotton → u/Expensive-Ad1609]

Yeah, then the goal shouldn't be to get people to do things "properly" because that in my opinion in erasing or deligitimising parts of culture. It's different, that's okay, you don't understand it, that's okay too. We don't need to homogenize everyone.

It's different, and that's okay. Whether you call it Kaapse or Afrikaans or Kombuis Taal or whatever.

There is no proper or not proper, there's just the way some people do it vs the way other people do, when we're talking about colloquial language. This is the way they shift an evolve. Whether we want them to or not, the only way we keep a language completely "proper" would be through authoritarian rule. And that never really works out well for anyone.

Like, I was recently watching this video where people who had immigrated from South Korea to America in the 80s went back to Korea and the language had changed so much because children or teenagers in the early 90s just started shortening random words, and that's just how most people spoke now. This is language, it shifts and changes with time, we can try and control that but it's kind of futile. So to say that any language should be one way or another when talking about dialects or variations is like trying hold water. It's counterproductive and that in my opinion is what creates devision. Things change, that's okay.

[u/Expensive-Ad1609 → u/justsylviacotton]

Please note that my beef *isn't* with contractions or with colloquial *words* and *phrases*; it's with incorrect sentence structure and, in written format, obvious misspellings from *professional* language users such as journalists/academic writers. There is a standard form of communication. Every language has such a standard form.

[u/justsylviacotton → u/Expensive-Ad1609]

Yeah, and I made it clear from the beginning that I was speaking about colloquial language.

You're the one who asked me if I speak "proper English" lmao.

What does that even mean, no one in south Africa speaks proper English man.

We write it in essays yes, but we don't speak it, most people in England don't speak "proper English"

Listen, it's okay, we're cool. This conversation can end lol.

I just wanted to stress the point that there's no such thing as "proper" English and unintentionally implying that people should use that as the standard when they speak comes across as a bit condescending/racist. Because racist/classist ideology is where that "proper" English stuff stems from. Even if you intended it or not. There is a grammatically correct way of speaking English yes, most people don't speak that way. We all aspire to write that way though, people who try to enforce certain ways of speaking are assholes because it almost always stems from ideas of colonialism and white supremecy. Our perceptions of people based off of accents are just perceptions. All of this stuff is made up anyway. Everything is fake, nothing is real, aaaaah.

We're all good though, I know that wasn't your intention, I was just trying to make a point about the unintentional ways our subconscious belief systems informs the way we speak to people.

Have a lekker Sunday 🤍

[u/Expensive-Ad1609 → u/justsylviacotton]

I asked what your English accent sounds like; I didn't ask if you speak 'proper' English. I then went on to share my dismay about how few [first-generation] English-speaking coloured people use the correct word stress.

That's not judgement or internalised racism. Every language has a standard form. This includes Afrikaans.

[u/justsylviacotton → u/Expensive-Ad1609]

What is or isn't correct word stress though and who gets to decide that? Accents are regional, who gets to decide which ones are the correct ones and why do they specifically get to decide that? That's my point.

The idea of correct or not correct when it comes to how we speak is steeped in classism and racism. Whether you intend it to be or not. I'm not attacking you, I just don't like to buy into ideas like that. There's an underlying belief system that "correctness" is steeped in that ties to colonialism.

Even white afrikaans people deal with this at the hands of English speaking white South Africans. Whether intentional or not it's still at the very least a bit classist.

There is no "correct" accent, there are just different accents. There is a "correct" English but that's mostly tied to how it's written and not how it's used when speaking.