1.1 Kaaps

Apr 24, 2026·By Peter Snyders

1.1 Kaaps

We are now ready to begin writing about Kaaps, the native language of many South African speakers. The mission is to integrate Kaaps into South Africa's multi-linguistic setup.

When Bartholomew Dias entered Mossel Bay in 1487, the Khoikhoi of the area drove their livestock inland at the sight of his two ships and a small vessel.

On 10th November 1497, Vasco da Gama set free a Khoisan man and, with signs at St. Helena Bay, indicated to him to bring back some of his men. The next day, fourteen or fifteen Khoisan men came to where Da Gama had moored his ships. The locals had no livestock and were not violent. They could not communicate except with signs. This continued until late 1613, when the ship Hector took Coree, an Indigenous leader, to England to have him learn English. He was returned on 18th June 1614.

Coree could speak a few English words, but in 1630, the English took Hadah (Autshumao) with them to Bantam (Java) so that he could learn English while on the ship. Autshumao (also called Herrie by the Dutch) became the interpreter for the English.

Why was it so hard for a Khoikhoi to learn a Western language? It was because they spoke two nearly completely different languages. Khoikhoi was so unique, being the only language (including all the ethnic groups and clans) that uses a click.

The European visitors and the local Khoikhoi used a Pidgin language only to barter. They would settle on single-fettered words like baa for an ox or cow and boo for a sheep. This was agreeable to the Khoikhoi because it used the simplest of their language, Kora. Because there were many Portuguese, English, and Dutch ships, with French and Danish to a lesser degree, this would make even the Pidgin language difficult to create.

The English had an innovative idea to get a Khoikhoi man to learn their language, which would, of course, also be very difficult. Coree and Harry had some insight into the value of things and could thus increase their costs by being the managers of the assignments.

The baby hears mostly the language of the mother, which is why it is called the mother tongue. The child will hear this language spoken by others in the family.

The sounds of the language would be so ingrained in the individual that any new sounds would be discarded. So, when bartering was to take place, the Khoikhoi people could only hear their language.

We must begin at The Origin of Kaaps, so that we can have a solid foundation. There is so much background that must be explained first, and no Foreword or Introduction would suffice. Metalanguage is one of the first reasons why we are writing these discussions on Kaaps in English. Another bonus, linguists and ordinary people all over the world can understand what we are establishing, and many will be able to use our resources to explain away all the irrational hostility towards their language.

Since we would all like to see a Wordlist and Spelling Rules of Kaaps, I look forward to you all taking part. If you add meanings to the words you are using in our Wordlist, we could also have a Dictionary of Kaaps. All of these would be sufficient reasons for everybody to seriously consider Kaaps as at least a language whose linguistic rules need more attention.

You are free to participate in any of the projects we will be presenting. Since we would all like to see a Wordlist and Spelling Rules of Kaaps, we look forward to you showing us how you speak and write in Kaaps. If you would like to send us your way of writing in Kaaps, make sure that the context in which you use the word is clear. Kaaps has five phases. This latest phase, Modern Kaaps, contains words like notch, bakvissie, bossies, tjais, nwata, etc., that not everyone understands.

We will show you how you can either make your own book or be part of a book where this information is given. All our many engagements of Kaaps can even lead spontaneously to not only a Kaapse Wordlist, but a Dictionary of Kaaps can issue from it, where all the rules of Kaaps are given a chance to show how rationally ordered our language is. All of these would be sufficient reason for anybody to seriously consider Kaaps as a language whose linguistics are comparable to any other so-called civilised language.

Moving on, we assume that all of us have Kaaps as our mother tongue or have a familiarity with our language to an appreciable degree. We have in our sources: (i) Bo-Kaap Kaaps (ii) Griqua Kaaps (iii) Namakwalands Kaaps (iv) and Rehoboth Basters Kaaps, and of course, the mother of all, (v) Kaapse Kaaps. Anyone from any Coloured community anywhere in South Africa is welcome to contribute their variant of Kaaps. If you look at the history of people of colour, you will discover that they all took Creole with them to wherever they went.

To call these dialects variants of Afrikaans is not correct because Afrikaans did not exist until Die Genootskap van Regte Afrikaners came together in 1875 to standardise Afrikaans. We will (as always) prove that Kaaps had its existence long before that time. All variants of Kaaps are daughter languages or dialects of Kaaps and not of Afrikaans.