lingvo.wikisort.org - Language

Kaaps (UK: /kɑːps/, meaning 'Cape'), also known as Afrikaaps,[1] is a West Germanic African language that evolved in the Western Cape province of South Africa. Its status as a sister language of Afrikaans[1] or a dialect of Afrikaans is unclear.[2][3] Since the early 2020s there has been a significant increase in the number of works of literature published in Kaaps.[4] Most works in Kaaps comes from authors located in the Cape Flats area of Cape Town, South Africa where it is most commonly spoken.[5][2][6] Although Kaaps is considered a growing phenomenon, it is more specifically a colloquial dialect of Afrikaans.[7] All other distinct colloquial variations of Afrikaans, including Kaaps, are organically connected to Standard Afrikaans as a widely spoken unitary variety and interact with it.[7]

Kaaps
Pronunciation	[kɑːps]
Native to	South Africa (Western Cape)
Ethnicity	Cape Coloureds Cape Malays
Native speakers	3 - 4 million (estimate)[1]
Language family	Indo-European Germanic West Germanic Weser-Rhine Germanic Low Franconian Dutch (Hollandic dialect) Kaaps
Early forms	Frankish Old Dutch Middle Dutch Modern Dutch
Language codes
ISO 639-3	–

An academic project to create the first Kaaps language dictionary was launched in 2021.[8]

History of Kaaps

In the 17th century, Kaaps were developed in South Africa's Western Cape in a multilingual context through the Dutch Colonisation.[9] In 1652 the Dutch East India Company VereenigdeOostindishe Compagnie (VOC) set up a refreshment station on the Cape, with the main purpose to replenish the supplies of food for the ships sailing between Europe and the East.[10] During this period, the region consisted of a range of people from different ethnic groups and cultures such as the indigenous Khoisan, Malays, West Africans and Madagascan people.[9] Many of these people were enslaved by the VOC, the Dutch East India Company and opulent Netherlanders.[9] As a form of rebellion, the people refused to speak the language of the colonists, Kaaps were thus developed through Afrikaans to communicate with one another and keep their conversations private.[9]

Kaaps and Identity

Just as with any language, Kaaps plays an indisputable role in an individual's culture and identity, especially in the Cape Flats.[11] Kaaps and its speakers, consisting mostly of coloured individuals, are deemed as marginalised.[12] Coloureds are considered the “forgotten nation”.[13] Only one of two perspectives is taken into account when discussing political topics such as class, race, and culture within a South African context: either that of the overprivileged White or that of the underprivileged Black.[14] Despite coloured and black individuals sharing similar oppression, inequality and poverty of the South African apartheid, the coloured community remains an overlooked social group.[12]

Stigmatisation of Kaaps

Kaaps is considered one of the most stigmatised variations of Standard Afrikaans, it is often associated with low status and comical.[15][12][16] Some common labels of Kaaps include a kombuistaal" (kitchen language) and "skollie-idioom” (gangster idiom).[9] The dominating image and portrayal of a Cape Kaaps speaker often consist of uneducated, half-skilled, naive and unable to comprehend or fully appreciate complexities.[15][16] Additionally, Kaaps is portrayed as a socially inferior “other”.[12] Mocked by numerous jokes and linked to Gatiepie, which is equivalent to the American Blackface in pop culture.[12] Due to this negative connotation and stigmatisation, many speakers of Kaaps felt embarrassed to use it in public settings.[12]

The first Kaaps dictionary

The first Dictionary in Kaaps was published in Cape Town, South Africa in 2021. This dictionary is trilingual and contains Kaaps, Afrikaans and English.[17] The Trilingual Dictionary of Kaaps was launched through a collective effort by academic and community stakeholders; the Centre for Multilingualism and Diversities research at the University of the Western Cape in partnership with an NGO Heal the Hood Project.[17][8] This project was funded by the Center for Race, Ethnicity and Language at Stanford University, along with Western Cape Department of Cultural Affairs and Sport.[5][17] The Trilingual Dictionary of Kaaps has four goals. They aim to increase awareness and knowledge on the history and roots of Kaaps, to contribute to debates around unifying the writing systems of Kaaps, to document the use of Kaaps on different platforms and lastly, to describe the lived linguistic experiences of Kaaps speakers.[17]

The importance of The Trilingual Dictionary of Kaaps

The Speakers of Kaaps

The existence of Kaaps predates that of standard Afrikaans and can be traced back to encounters between indigenous African Khoi and San and slaves in what was known as the Cape Dutch Colony, from as early as the 1700s.[7] Kaaps is mostly spoken by the working class, Coloured community in the Cape Flats.[5] Today Kaaps is a marginalized language as it was perceived as a colloquial version of standard Afrikaans during the Apartheids era in South Africa, a perception that persists in Democratic South Africa.[18] Afrikaans was appropriated by white colonialists and standard, Afrikaans was established and developed as a form of resistance against hegemonic English. Furthermore, it was developed to create a collective racial identity of ordinary white Afrikaner people thereby separating them from the working-class, Kaaps speaking Coloured community.[5][18] Kaaps is viewed as a subpar, impure or mixed language; consisting of mainly Afrikaans and English languages thrown together. This influenced how the social identities of coloured people are viewed, thus implying that Black and White identities are pure and bounded while Coloured identities were not.[5][16] The speakers of Kaaps are often linked to a low social-order, comicality, stupidity and the despised language variety.

It is thus the aim of projects like The Trilingual Dictionary of Kaaps to destigmatize the Kaaps language and to encourage its speakers to take back their dignity and agency. By publishing a dictionary in Kaaps, it might encourage the view of Kaaps as an African language like the other African dialects.[16] Empowering Kaaps would thus empower the speakers of this language.

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References

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