Abstract
The twofold title indicates that the article is divided into two parts and how they are related to each other. It is worth revisiting the discovery of the Arabic-Afrikaans literature by Van Selms, given the fact of its great impact on the ongoing discussion concerning the Afrikaans language. Perhaps, for the first time, based on observations, it is made clear that Van Selms included the findings of this research in the broader picture of the origin, development and importance of Afrikaans to his fellow language community. The article investigates whether Van Selms achieved the goal he had hoped for.
Van Selms was the first and last scholar to make Arabic-Afrikaans a focal point. It couldn’t be otherwise if one considers his capabilities. The qualities needed to carry out the great task of deciphering the Arabic-Afrikaans texts and to link them to the origin and development of Afrikaans would have been exceptionally, to say the least. A student of this literature needed a knowledge of Arabic, Malay, Dutch and Afrikaans. It was therefore relevant to go into some details of Van Selm’s educational history and experiential learning concerning these four languages. An analysis of the circumstances is given of how it came about that Van Selms became familiar with the Arabic language. He also benefited from his World War II experience of the Muslim society in Indonesia and maintained contact and a friendly relationship with the South African Muslim community. In addition to that he spent his student years and his work experience as pastor among the people and in the region close enough to the Dutch region he later pinpointed as the breeding ground for the Afrikaans language.
Van Selms was honest about the difficulties he encountered in transcribing the Afrikaans in Arabic script. It is obvious that to represent a Germanic language like Afrikaans in Arabic script is not done without many adaptations, which he explained, but not to the extreme, out of consideration for the probable readers, who would not be interested in all that detail. Criticism of his transcription is also referred to.
Arabic-Afrikaans is coined and defined by Van Selms as Afrikaans written in Arabic script. The community where these texts were used consisted of the offspring of the slaves and tradesmen shipped to the Cape by the Dutch East Indian Company. They established Islam in South Africa. Van Selms admits that to call these texts a literature could be exaggerated, but because the spiritual life of a particular group of people was thereby documented, it should seriously be considered. An overview of Van Selms’s Arabic-Afrikaans publications in chronologic order is given, and the three largest publications in Arabic-Afrikaans receive attention: Question and answer, The trustworthy word and Explanation of religion. The search for the Malay catechism, Gablomalien, which could be the oldest book in Afrikaans, followed. The writer of the largest work, Abu Bakr Effendi, is introduced to the readers. Some of the details of his coming to South Africa, as told to Van Selms, are now corrected by a recent study. An example of the rich heritage from Hellenism and older Greek philosophy cherished by the Islamic spiritual culture is indicated. The eternal dilemma as stated by Plato found its way into an Arabic-Afrikaans catechism: Is holiness loved by the gods because it is holy or is it holy because it is loved by the gods? Van Selms reflects on this and prefers giving credit to both arguments as of comparable importance. Challenges which Van Selms came across in transcribing and translating the texts are noted. The literature provides an accessible introduction of Islam to Westerners. Arabic-Afrikaans illustrates the well-known fact that religion provides a strong impetus for translation. The need to understand the language of a religion encourages scholars to translate the original texts into the modern language of the adherents.
In reading the Arabic-Afrikaans texts Van Selms asked himself, or was challenged by, three questions:
- Is this a language of a group only, the Cape Malays, or does it represent a stage in the overall development of Afrikaans?
- Are the Dutchisms the result of official Dutch in Cape Dutch publications or do they come from the spoken Dutch of earlier centuries at the Cape?
- Does this literature argue for or against current theories about the origin of Afrikaans?
In an article he wrote during World War II Van Selms mentioned how he came to be in possession of Arabic-Afrikaans literature and made explicit remarks about the origin and development of Afrikaans. Afterwards he was convinced that what he wrote then was lost due to military circumstances. That article was subsequently found and cannot be omitted from our investigation. He then argued that the Arabic-Afrikaans was a stage in the overall development of Afrikaans, that the Dutchisms came from the spoken Dutch, and that Afrikaans originated from Dutch. Van Selms used the example of Prof. J.J. Smith, author of the first Afrikaans dictionary, who was at first hesitant to acknowledge that Afrikaans originated from Dutch because, as Van Selms was polite to remark, Afrikaners don’t like the Dutch because of their haughty attitude towards Afrikaans. After years of research Smith admitted that the vocabulary of Afrikaans is 99,5% from Dutch.
It is said that Van Selms was disappointed by the reaction of the Afrikaans philologists to his findings. Their lack of interest was attributed to racism on their part. The idea that Afrikaans was the language of a white population only could not tolerate the evidence that was accentuated by the exposure of the Arabic-Afrikaans literature. That the oldest book in Afrikaans might have been written by someone who wasn’t a member of the elite was too unpleasant to deal with or to accept.
Van Selms emphasised two characteristics of Afrikaans, namely the conservative Dutch vocabulary and the simplified declination of verbs. The vocabulary is contributed by the developed Cape citizenry, and the simplified use of the language came from the servants. Afrikaans developed through the collective interaction of the entire community, serving as both the medium for communication between servants and their masters and how the directives were conveyed from masters to servants. According to this view the external behaviour of the users of the language links with the internal occurrences in the language. Dutch from the triangle The Hague-Rotterdam-Gouda provided the main breeding ground for Afrikaans.
Afrikaans serves as a buffer against globalisation and benefits from the enthusiasm for it. Van Selms warns that the Dutch attitude towards Afrikaans should not run parallel with the way they previously behaved with regard to Flemish.
Keywords: Abu Bakr Effendi; Achmat Davids; Arabic-Afrikaans; Arabic-Afrikaans literature; Explanation of religion; Flemish; Gablomalien; Greek heritage; intellectual contemplative aspects of the translated texts; Islam; origin and development of Afrikaans; Question and answer; religious need; The trustworthy word; transcription
- This article's focus image is compiled from archival sources in the public domain from the University of Pretoria (photo of Adrianus van Selms) and the Afrikaans Language Museum (photo of document in Arabic Afrikaans).