Abstract
Given the chequered history of Afrikaans in Namibia, it is to be expected that a range of attitudes and perceptions regarding Afrikaans has existed and still exists among its own speakers as well as among non-Afrikaans speakers who are in contact with the various groups within its speech community. After three decades of Namibian independence these attitudes and perceptions remain largely undocumented. Therefore this study aimed to document these attitudes and perceptions.
It was, however, not possible to gather a clear majority of the Khomas region’s residents’ attitudes towards and perceptions about Afrikaans. Therefore a convenience sample was drawn, which means that the results are not necessarily representative of the entire population.
The study focused on perceptions and attitudes as they were indirectly observed, and not necessarily on the reasons for such perceptions or attitudes. Attitudes and perceptions were measured only within the parameters of the variables that are represented in the research instrument, and they pertain to the Afrikaans language as a construct rather than the Afrikaans speech community.
A mixed-method research design was used for this exploratory research, utilising a survey methodology. The study was mostly qualitative in that it reported subjective results, because participants’ attitudes and perceptions would form the basis of conclusions. Quantitatively, attitudinal variables within and across groups were quantified and processed statistically. Quantitative variables like age, and gender binaries were also included for purposes of comparison, as well as the following various groups: Afrikaans-speaking respondents, non-Afrikaans-speaking respondents and multilingual respondents (Afrikaans and other languages).
The electronic questionnaire was distributed in May 2020 with a link via e-mail and social media, while the printed questionnaires were distributed by hand to potential respondents who could not access the online questionnaire. There were 266 responses to the electronic questionnaire and 34 respondents completed the printed questionnaire – thus 300 respondents in total. There was a question in the biographical part of the questionnaire that requested respondents to indicate how long they have been living in the Khomas region. This ensured that any questionnaires of non-residents of the Khomas region could be excluded from the data analysis. After the last mentioned exclusion the number of respondents had been reduced to 275.
The results contain different attitudinal profiles (positive, neutral and negative attitudes), which were constructed from certain questions and their possible responses. The responses of the three different groups – Afrikaans-speaking respondents, non-Afrikaans-speaking respondents and multilingual respondents (Afrikaans and other languages) – were divided into the relevant profiles. Lastly, the respondents’ perceptions regarding Afrikaans were also documented.
The research and results show that the majority of respondents have a largely positive attitude towards languages in general, as well as towards Afrikaans. However, there is a misperception among the younger generations of Afrikaans speakers about how Afrikaans originated in Namibia. From this it can be concluded that the younger generations are uninformed about their own language, and this could possibly influence future attitudes and perceptions towards Afrikaans in Namibia. The results of the three different groups – Afrikaans-speaking, non-Afrikaans speakers and multilingual speakers (Afrikaans and other languages) – indicate that Khomas residents generally have a positive attitude towards Afrikaans and that they would like to promote Afrikaans and advise other people – as well as their own future children – to learn Afrikaans. However, there was an exception for the non-Afrikaans-speaking group where they felt more neutral about the statement that they would one day teach their children Afrikaans, but their attitudes were also more positive than neutral or negative.
From this study, conducted in 2020, it is clear that the respondents in the Khomas region still cherish the perception that Afrikaans – even 30 years after independence – is still the lingua franca in the Khomas region.
A recommendation for future studies is to involve a larger part of the Khomas region, or perhaps even all the regions of Namibia, to get a clearer idea of the attitudes towards and perceptions about Afrikaans in Namibia as a whole. In the event of such a follow-up study it may be good to use a method other than the convenience sample in order to obtain feedback from a definite sample size. The data generated by this study could also be utilised further; for example, different perceptions/attitudes could be measured based on the level of education, gender, age, etc. It would also be good to conduct similar studies testing attitudes and perceptions regarding other languages in Namibia. Furthermore, it may also be good to instruct learners in schools about the origin of Afrikaans in Namibia – not necessarily through history lessons, but through comprehension texts or literature dealing with the origin of Afrikaans in Namibia. Further studies on attitudes towards Afrikaans – or other Namibian languages – would probably also yield some very interesting findings.
Keywords: Afrikaans; attitudes; independence; Namibia; perceptions; sociolinguistics
- The background photo of the Khomas region in Namibia on this article’s featured image was created by Bernd Dittrich and obtained from Unsplash. The foreground contains a photo from the 5th edition of the Handwoordeboek van die Afrikaanse Taal (Odendal, F.F. and Gouws, R.H. 2009).