LACUS
FORUM
XXIV
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LANGUAGE SHIFT IN POST-APARTHEID SOUTH AFRICA:
THE APPEAL OF ENGLISH
Vivian de Klerk & Barbara Bosch
Rhodes University
1. Introduction
According to Lanham and Macdonald (1979:26) “the primary social division
in white South African society is unquestionably that of language loyalty
(English versus Afrikaans as mother tongue).” Language loyalty among white
Afrikaans speakers has perhaps always been more intense than among Englishspeaking South Africans, because of the attempts by the British government to
suppress Dutch and later Afrikaans for ideological reasons during the nineteenth
and early twentieth centuries. Afrikaans played a major role in the emergence of
white Afrikaner nationalism towards the end of the nineteenth century, becoming
a symbol of the white Afrikaans speaker’s identity and of their struggle against
British domination. “Language identity was (and is still in some communities,
notably the extreme right wing groups) equated with the ethnic identity of the
white Afrikaans speaker ... For them, language was an integral part of religion,
politics and of development” (Watermeyer 1996:101).
However, in 1994 South Africa declared a new language policy in which all
languages were given equal status. This has meant that Afrikaans has undergone
a dramatic shift in terms of its sociopolitical position from being one of 2 official
languages (with English) to being one of 11 official languages in the country.
Now beleaguered, and loaded with negative connotations after decades of
association with the very unpopular Apartheid government, which had made
special efforts to enhance the language, its speakers find themselves in a difficult
position. In recent years there has been an intense debate on the position of postApartheid Afrikaans (Webb 1992); Cluver (1993) writes of its serious decline,
noting the functions it is losing to English and the disappearance of boundary
markers for Afrikanerdom other than the language itself (cited in Branford
1996:40).
To make matters worse, despite South Africa’s new language policy, and
despite the writings of people like Robert Philipson (1992) on the dangers of
linguistic imperialism, there is increasing evidence of a steady shift in allegiance
in favour of English. Its demographic distribution, its apparent neutrality, its
range of native and non-native users across cultures, its ability to fulfil a range of
linguistic functions and its rich literary tradition has made English enormously
appealing and powerful world-wide (Pennycook 1994). In particular there have
353
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been rapid changes in recent years in the general attitude of Afrikaans speakers
towards English, with a growth of positive attitudes and a covert prestige attached
to the ability to speak English (de Klerk & Bosch 1993; Bosch & de Klerk 1993;
Cluver 1993; Watermeyer 1996).
It is generally believed that Afrikaans speakers are more bilingual than
English speakers, or are at least more prepared to use their second language to
accommodate the listener. According to one survey, “only 9,6% of first-language
English speakers consider themselves fully bilingual, while 13,5% of Afrikaans
speakers do; almost twice as many English speakers (22,4%) reported no competence in the other official language as Afrikaans speakers (12,9%)” (Lass 1987:303). With the increased exposure of Afrikaans children to English through the
media, and the heightening of opportunities for interlingual interaction, high
levels of bilingualism are increasingly likely. Add to this the declining popularity
of Afrikaans and the negative stereotypes with which it is associated in the minds
of many South Africans, and the likelihood for language shift to English
increases.
As a result, since the opening of all schools to all races and the removal of the
requirement that pupils had to have the medium of instruction (MOI) of the
school as their mother-tongue, there have been two discernable (and very
different) movements: the first, led by right-wing Afrikaners, has been a racistinspired move to retain monolingual independent Afrikaans schools; the second
has been a steady trickle of Afrikaans-speaking children to the English-medium
schools in English (and urban) areas of the country, particularly to the private
(and very expensive) schools. While this move may partially be explained in
terms of parental worries about dropping standards, it may also represent a subtle
but definite shift in language allegiance. In any event, such a shift will have an
inevitable effect on the linguistic identities of the children concerned.
This paper reports on the experiences of a 10-year old white Afrikaansspeaking little boy (M) who, at the start of 1994, was moved from the local
Afrikaans-medium school to a local boys’ English-medium private school, while
his parents maintained Afrikaans 100% at home. He was interviewed and taperecorded one week after he moved schools, and then again at the start of his
second year at the school. In addition, the mother (K) undertook to monitor his
linguistic behaviour and to report anything that might potentially be of interest;
she was interviewed at the end of the first year. M’s written work during the year
was also made available for analysis, and his English teacher and remedial
teacher were also interviewed at the end of the year.
The study was essentially qualitative, and aimed to monitor the phonological,
syntactic and lexical changes occurring in M’s language use for possible evidence
of a language shift taking place from dominance in Afrikaans to dominance in
English and to assess the psycho-social effects of the change in medium of
tuition.
When the mother tongue (MT) is different from the economically dominant
language of a given region, shifts in usage and attitude are observed (cf. Hofman
DEKLERK & BOSCH/LANGUAGE SHIFT IN SOUTH
AFRICA
355
et al. 1984:151). These shifts are accelerated when a child moves to a school with
a MOI other than his/her MT, for although the child may continue to speak the
MT at home, the language of school and peers influences the child’s language
preferences, and “during this period there is a notable increase in the percentage
of persons who make the definite break with the language of daily use” (Veltman
1983:20). Data indicate that this process of language shift accelerates as children
get older (op. cit.:1983:213). Such trends have been observed world-wide (e.g.
Taighde 1990; Holmes et al. 1993) “What begins as the language of social and
economic mobility ends, within 3 generations or so, as the language of the crib
as well, even in democratic and pluralism-permitting contexts” (Fishman
1989:206).
2. The Local Context
Among factors which are important in resisting wholesale language shift are
the role of institutional power, social attitudes, the number of MT speakers, use
of the language at home, residential contiguity and opportunities to speak the
MT, resistance to inter-linguistic marriages, support for community languages in
schools and institutional resources such as community newspapers and religious
services (Holmes et al. 1993:15).
As far as the Eastern Cape Province is concerned, which contains 15,9% of
the total population of South Africa (approximately 38 million in the 1991
census), there has been a decrease in the reported number of mother-tongue
Afrikaans speakers between the censuses of 1980 and 1991. Afrikaans speakers
number 557,020 (9.8% of total) compared with 230,520 English speakers (6,7%),
who, though thinly spread, cluster around the urban areas. Grahamstown in the
Eastern Cape Province of South Africa is a small educational centre with an
estimated population of 125,000, of whom approximately 12,000 are white and
some 80,000 Xhosa-speaking black people (10,000 coloured, <1,000 Indian)
(unpublished mimeograph of the Development Bank of South Africa 1995). It is
generally known as an English-speaking town, although there is a fairly sizeable
Afrikaans-speaking community, which is effectively divided into two as a
consequence of 50 years of apartheid: the white and coloured Afrikaans speakers,
who were until recently served by two separate schools (both are now
multiracial).
3. The Case History
M started life in Grahamstown as a monolingual Afrikaans-speaker (basically
a minority language in the town); his parents moved him to an English-medium
school at the start of Std 2 (aged 10.2 years), after he had formally studied
English as a second language for 18 months. The linguistic history of the parents
356
LACUS FORUM 24
has a bearing on their decision: while both regard themselves as totally
Afrikaans-speaking, the mother (K), while she grew up as a mother-tongue
Afrikaans speaker in a very Afrikaans area, was inculcated with a strong sense of
the need to be able to speak English properly, probably due to the influence of her
English-speaking maternal grandmother. She was enrolled for extra English
lessons from an early age, and although she never used or heard English in the
community, she remembers having to take out an English and an Afrikaans book
when she went to the library.
Although she very seldom had to speak English, her parents always had a few
English friends, and Thursdays were “English days” in the family, in order to
give the children an opportunity to practice. K’s husband, although he had grown
up in Grahamstown, is more thoroughly Afrikaans than she, with a strong proAfrikaans sentiment and a corresponding resistance to English. Although he is
fluent in English, and acknowledges its usefulness in the wider world, it was his
side of the family who most strongly opposed the decision to move M to an
English school. (“They sort of labelled it as deserting Afrikaans”).
The parents’ decision was based on a combination of the falling standards at
the local Afrikaans school, the rapidly changing political situation in the country,
M’s own abilities and eagerness to learn, and their desire “to provide the best
academic opportunity, even if it meant sacrificing mother-tongue instruction”
(K). They had felt that it was important to make the change early, because “it’s
not only a language, it’s a culture, it’s an identity.” They had won M over by
emphasising his eagerness to learn, and the opportunities which English would
provide, especially overseas and in the world of computers. They had also
stressed how easy Afrikaans lessons would be at an English school. When
interviewed at the start of the change, M expressed a generally positive, if
somewhat tentative and cautious attitude to his new school. In his view at that
time, this was a temporary move, and he would move to a different school after
Grade 7 (the changeover from junior to high school).
The parents’ main reservations about their decision had concerned linguistic
difficulty in particular subjects (e.g. the difference in counting, where English
says “twenty-one” and Afrikaans “een-en-twintig”), and possible problems in
forming good friendships.
The parents had been very much aware of the social and ideological
significance of their decision in the community and “the sense of the Afrikaans
community of being a traitor” (K). This reached them through the father’s parents
and sister-in-law, whom some people had tried to use as a channel “to try and
convince us to do otherwise” (K). The move therefore took courage and
conviction. Although there was no overt ostracism, the issue was, and still is, not
publicly discussed, out of politeness. The fact that three families had
subsequently followed their example a year later, after consulting them about
their experience, suggests that once they had broken the ice, other people felt
safer to follow: “we believe we did the right thing, and more and more seem to
be doing it. So in a way, what was fiercely resisted I think has sort of become a
DEKLERK & BOSCH/LANGUAGE SHIFT IN SOUTH
AFRICA
357
voorbeeld, an example” (K).
4. Results
In the first interview, M expressed a guardedly positive sentiment about his
new life at an English school. Small incidents revealed that the process of
adjustment was not easy: on being asked to write a letter to his granny at school
during an English lesson in the first week, he automatically wrote it in Afrikaans;
he had also had to insist on the correct pronunciation of his name, because it had
an English version which tended to be used (e.g. Johan/John1). It was clear from
his responses that arriving home after an English school day was an enormous
relief, and he could then relax his guard and stop concentrating.
However, his determination to master English was evident in his (voluntary)
choice of an English book from the library (Asterix goes to Corsica). M very
carefully avoided using any Afrikaans words throughout the interview;
particularly noticeable by its total absence in the interview was “ja”, the
Afrikaans word for “yes” which is a colloquial form ubiquitously used by nearly
all South African English speaking children. Instead, he used “yes” 56 times,
marked evidence of conscious self-monitoring. Already during the first week
there were traces of English influences on his spoken Afrikaans at home, and
several instances of borrowing of lexical items referring to school routines, for
example:
Ons moes in lyne [rye] staan en ons skoene afhaal [uittrek]
(We had to stand in lines and take off our shoes.)
Ons het Saterdag clubs en ek doen woodcarving [houtsny].
(On Saturdays we have clubs and I am doing woodcarving.)
In his interview, which was in English, he revealed a fairly high level of
competence in understanding the questions and in responding sensibly to them.
The length of his speaking turns averaged 5.5 words per utterance, with 45% of
all his turns 3 words or fewer. Heavy traces of Afrikaans were evident in his
English pronunciation, with unaspirated [h] and devoicing of final consonants
(did [dit]; dogs [dok]), and trilled [r] particularly noticeable. He said that he did
not consciously think about speaking in English, saying that the words came
naturally. Apart from occasional problems with vocabulary (e.g. Then we write
it down, trace it down; We went ice-skiing [skating] there) the grammatical
features which characterised the interview could be categorised as follows:
1
A fictitious equivalent
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LACUS FORUM 24
1. Problems with concord, e.g. When I were in Sub A; I has played before.
2. Avoidance of all past tense forms of verbs by using “did”, e.g. We did get
R5 a day; I did go to practise and I did catch the balls.
3. Difficulty with determiner choice, e.g. I did buy a aeroplane; It was ^
hundred and sixty rand; I did build a airport.
4. Inappropriate choice of relative pronouns, e.g. The lions what wanted to
eat her.
5. Inappropriate adverbial forms, e.g. How did it go? quite nice; We do the
stuff very slow.
Over the year, particular patterns in M’s use of English and of Afrikaans
emerged. As far as his English usage was concerned, there was a steady
improvement in overall competence and a commensurate decrease in the rate of
errors. Initial problems in reading English (e.g. in week 6 he did not recognise the
words lavatory or corridor) steadily improved, as did the English marks he
obtained in formal classes. At the start of the year the Neale Analysis of Reading
test yielded a score of 8.9 years for English reading accuracy and 8.2 for reading
comprehension, and by the end of that year (chronological age 11.1), he had a
reading age of 10.10. On the Schonell Word Recognition Test M achieved a score
of 9.4 when he was 10.7, and a year later (11.7) the score had increased to 11.1.
Scores on the Schonell Silent Reading Test also improved, the gap between
chronological age and reading age narrowing steadily. In dictation tests his age
increased from 8.6 at the start of the year to 10.5 in November of that year. The
teacher’s comments on the reports during the year were consistently positive.
English and Afrikaans are both Germanic languages, and share several
syntactic and phonological features, and this similarity was problematic for M.
At first he experienced problems with pronunciation and recognition of English
words (e.g in the first month he heard 60 Kgs as 60 cages and pronounced
Australia with the first half Afrikaans and the second half English, indicative of
his efforts to classify the two competing sound systems). Occasional comments
revealed that he was consciously thinking about similarities and differences
between sounds: in week 6 he reported that they were studying die Bore war [the
Boer War] and a week later commented maar dis mos nie dieselfde as ‘n 12-bore
haelgeweer nie [but it’s not the same as a 12-bore rifle]. When words in both
languages were very similar, confusion was more likely (e.g. “Kyk ma, ‘n spelling
fout” [look mom, a spelling mistake]; “Dis ‘n program mainly oor babatjies” [it’s
a programme about babies]). Problems in Afrikaans spelling appeared to increase
in frequency over the year, as English spelling patterns became more dominant
in his academic life.
Cross-linguistic interference was noticeable in his spoken and written
Afrikaans and English, and the frequency of code-switching at home steadily
increased with each passing week, as well as the complexity of the words which
DEKLERK & BOSCH/LANGUAGE SHIFT IN SOUTH
AFRICA
359
were borrowed. The following categories were evident2:
1. Transfer of Afrikaans syntactic constructions to English, e.g. My mother
checks the sugar if we come back [Afr. as = when/if] (w1).
2. Codemixing and use of English idiomatic expressions in Afrikaans, e.g.
Is dit nie ‘n bietjie out of the way nie? (w2) [isn’t it a bit out ...]; Hy het
sommer stupid ge-act (w25) [he simply acted stupidly].
3. Borrowings from English, e.g. Die kat slide teen die yskas af (w2) [the cat
is sliding down the fridge]; Dis creepy in C se kamer (w10) [it’s creepy in
C’s room].
4. Literal translations from English, e.g. Dit moet iets meen [beteken] (w5)
[it must mean something]; Hy was unguilty [onskuldig] (w27) [he was
unguilty].
5. Using English syntactic patterns in Afrikaans, e.g. Dis ‘n nuut (= nuwe)
muur (w10) [It’s a new wall]; Dis a klein ding (= kleine dingetjie) (w10)
[It’s a small thing].
Code-switching is commonly regarded as a shift from base language to the
other language for a word, phrase or sentence; when such switches are
intrasentential, certain syntactic constraints determine the likely grammatical
contexts (Saunders 1988:187; Appel and Muysken 1987:129). Code-switching
by accomplished bilinguals usually manipulates language for special effects and
is related indirectly to processes of power and solidarity. It is thus usually a
language practice in which individuals draw on their linguistic resources to
accomplish conversational purposes - strategies for playing the game of social
life. However, at this stage in his transition from Afrikaans to English, M does
not seem to be consciously manipulating the two languages for social effect.
Indeed, K asserted that he was unconscious of any slips, and while it may well be
the case that his use of English expressions at home was a subtle device to assert
his new and changing identity, it is much more likely that these “interferences”
are deviations because of the influence of the other language, especially as they
occur at all levels (syntactic, phonetic, lexical, pragmatic and semantic) and
modes (spoken, written). It would seem that they are not static or permanent
traces of the one language on the other, but are rather “dynamic” and ephemeral
intrusions, accidental slips in stress patterns or syntax etc., resulting from the
transition process that M is undergoing in changing from dominance in one
language to dominance in another.
After 27 weeks, M was asking questions at home about Afrikaans words, and
explanations were being given in English (e.g. M: “Wat beteken omhein? [what
does omhein mean?] K: Fenced in). By the end of week 33 he had begun to use
jy/jou increasingly as a term of address instead of the polite ma/pa. By the end of
2
Bracketed references (e.g. (w4)) refer to the week in which the utterance was noted.
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LACUS FORUM 24
week 34 he mentioned how nice it was to be able to watch TV programmes in
either language with equal ease. The parents’ decision to use only Afrikaans at
home became increasingly difficult to uphold, and, as K put it: “hy praat
Afrikaans soos ‘n Engelse kind [he talks Afrikaans like an English child] - it’s
absolutely fascinating”. She noted that English had begun to have more of an
effect on his Afrikaans than vice versa, and that she had started to make an effort
“to keep his Afrikaans a good standard”. She confirmed that he seemed totally
unaware of the slips he was making in his Afrikaans, and increasingly, there were
cases when he spoke English to her by mistake, without noticing. She noticed that
at times, when listening to the radio or watching a TV programme, he was
unaware of which language it was in, and when answering the telephone he was
often unable to remember whether the speaker was English or Afrikaans.
He even reported dreaming in English and his mother reported that he had
talked in his sleep in English. In K’s view, after a full year, his former sense of
himself as Afrikaans had changed radically, and he had a dual loyalty to both
languages. Although K denied ever having strong Afrikaans feelings, and feeling
threatened by English, she admitted: “I suppose it makes me sad [that M had
shifted language allegiance] ... I didn’t think it would come in my lifetime”.
After a year, not only was the informant much more confident, but there were
significant linguistic changes: the average utterance length had increased to 7.4
words per utterance, with only 36% of them shorter than 3 words. There were
only two minor errors during the interview (“... and that kinds of things”; “... and
she’s talks to anybody...”) and these could easily be attributed to normal slips of
the tongue rather than incompetence. In addition, the avoidance of past tense
forms on verbs, which had been so prevalent a year earlier, had disappeared
completely, with several past tenses successfully used. Also noticeable was the
unconscious sprinkling of “ja” (43 occurrences in total compared with only 3 of
“yes”) throughout the interview, which had been noticeable by their absence a
year earlier. This word, initially seen by him as “Afrikaans” and to be avoided at
all costs a year earlier, had now been permitted back by M, in view of its usage
by his English peers.
Changes in attitude to English were evident in his firm determination not to
shift back to an Afrikaans-medium school when asked, although there was some
ambivalence about the distant future. It was apparent that although his home life
was still decidedly Afrikaans, the rest of his world had become rapidly anglicised
and nearly all his friends were now English-speaking. Apart from Afrikaans
predominating in domestic life, he also tended to think in Afrikaans during
lessons in mathematics (but no other lessons), and during emotive moments, such
as when he was unhappy. Subtle changes in personality had also emerged: his
mother had noticed in M an increased preparedness to stand up for his own rights,
to query things and defend his point of view. She was generally pleased about this
greater confidence, but admitted to trying to counteract the reduced respect for
the authority of adults which she noticed in M:
DEKLERK & BOSCH/LANGUAGE SHIFT IN SOUTH
AFRICA
361
I do, I do in you know, say “‘n mens praat nie so met jou ma of pa nie... as
jy met ouma praat doen dit op ‘n behoorlike manier” [you don’t talk like that
with your mother or father ... when you talk to granny, do it properly]. I’ve
said to M now okay you don’t do that ... even if they do it, you don’t.
She also mentioned having some difficulty in knowing whether M’s friends’
behaviour (some of which she disapproved of) was a general English custom or
not. Overall, both parents had no regrets over their decision; the only down side
had been the loss of his friends. M had never expressed regret of any kind, only
very positive sentiments. He had by then made it very clear that he did not want
to switch back to Afrikaans later, saying it would be too difficult because of the
lack of technical Afrikaans vocabulary and the fact that he was doing all his
subjects (including maths) and his reading totally in English.
5. Concluding Remarks
Usually the language spoken by parents becomes the language of their
children, but this case study reveals a context where the parents, while
maintaining their own Afrikaans identity and lifestyle, have supported the
development of anglicised language behaviour for their child (cf. Veltman
1983:91). As Holmes et al. (1993) point out, strongly positive attitudes to the
home language can easily prevail despite parallel positive attitudes to English;
this family values English and want to improve their son’s competence in it, but
they also value their own language very highly for cultural and traditional
reasons, which gives “abundant evidence of subjective ethnolinguistic vitality”
(Holmes et al. 1993:14).
However, “languages do not come into contact under neutral emotional
conditions. There are always concomitant attitudinal reactions on the part of the
groups in contact” (Shuy et al. 1973:151). This study has revealed the strong
emotive currents underlying the experiences of the members of this family, and
the concomitant and inevitable shift in perceptions about the identity of the
participants, especially M. Over a year M has changed from seeing himself as an
Afrikaans child temporarily placed among English speakers to regarding himself
as part of an English world which he does not want to leave; without any change
in geographical location, in religion, or in home life, he has managed to shift to
a world where his friends, his learning experiences, his thoughts and even his
dreams are English ones. M has a dual identity at present, probably currently on
the fulcrum of true bilingualism, simultaneously Afrikaans and English.
This study underlines the importance of motivation and attitudinal factors in
predicting success in learning a second language: “the combination of effort plus
desire to achieve the goals of learning plus favourable attitudes towards the
learning the language” (Gardner 1985:10). Also of crucial importance is
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LACUS FORUM 24
acculturation – “the social and psychological integration of the learner with the
target language” (Spolsky 1989:143). Acculturation requires social integration,
sufficient contacts with the L2 group and psychological openness, with the
learner wanting to adopt the ways of the TL group. All these conditions were met
in this case. Functional or instrumental motivation to learn English was strong,
and Grahamstown provided a context in which social enclosure (the extent to
which separate groups maintain separateness) was very low, offering extensive
contact opportunities across language groups. Congruence and similarity between
the two cultures, and the mother’s personal facility in English obviously
reinforced positive feelings about the L2 and increased M’s motivation and egopermeability, all essential for successful learning (Schumann 1986).
During his year in an English school, M has acculturated and modified his
attitudes, knowledge and behaviour. Learning the appropriate linguistic habits has
involved more than learning the language, it has involved social and
psychological adaptation, changes in beliefs, attitudes, values and other
behavioral patterns, sometimes against the wishes of his parents. While he
continues to speak Afrikaans at home, the language of school and of his peers
will persist in influencing his language preferences. Because of the overpowering
influence of school, peergroup and outside environment, the domain of language
use is not likely to remain compartmentalised much longer (Tosi 1984) and
English is increasingly likely to invade the home (Holmes et al. 1993:16). The
more M uses English, the more likely it is that one day his children will be
exposed to it, and their MT will shift to English: the principal language of parents
becomes the MT of the children (Veltman 1983).
Because of South Africa’s linguistic diversity and its democratic constitution,
the issues of minority language rights and language in education are under the
spotlight. This study is a pilot study for a large-scale research project on language
shift on an individual and a group level in the Eastern Cape Province; such
research will, we hope, provide valuable insights into language shift at a national
level and may underlie patterns of change in identity, which has implications for
SA’s national identity.
Despite having only 3.4m MT speakers in South Africa, English continues to
be used for modernisation and social change, and to provide unprecedented access
to mobility and advancement to native and non-native users who possess it as a
linguistic tool. M is in the vanguard of a growing cohort of young South Africans
who probably feel a sense of linguistic schizophrenia as they undergo a shift in
language loyalty and linguistic competence from their MT to English, either from
choice or imposition. English simultaneously represents oppression (for some)
and freedom, offering access to elite educational, scientific and political domains.
But it is a necessary evil to even its strongest opponents, and more and more
parents are following the trend of ensuring that their progeny master English and
make it theirs.
DEKLERK & BOSCH/LANGUAGE SHIFT IN SOUTH
AFRICA
363
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bedreigde spesie?” Tydskrif vir Geesteswetenskappe 33(4):299-311.
Branford, W. 1996. “English in South African Society: A Preliminary Overview”
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