2.1 Kaaps

2.1 Kaaps

(© 4th September 2020 by Peter Snyders)

We will be using some of the six means of gaining correct knowledge called pramanas in Sanskrit. The first pramana is Perception, and one aspect of Perception is that it can only be applied to the present. This is obvious because our senses cannot see, hear, smell, etc., in the past or the future.

We, therefore, look at what is in front of us as Jesus says in the Gospel of Thomas: “Know what is in your sight and that which is hidden will be revealed unto you.” Once we can see what is there for us to perceive, we can then rise above our direct perceptions and go beyond our limits (transcend).

We do not know exactly what transpired when Jan van Riebeeck met with Autshumao (whom he called Harry/Herrie), who was the Khoisan head of trade for the needs of ships in the Table Bay area. Autshumao was sent to Bantam, an English post in the far east, to learn English. It is often mentioned in the Van Riebeeck Journals that Autshumao spoke “broken English.” The Dutch could understand English, so Jan van Riebeeck could, for the most part, understand Autshumao when he and a friend went aboard Van Riebeeck’s ship on the 7th April 1652. 

The Dutch were at war with England, and the Heren Seventien. The directors of the Dutch East India Company had given instructions that their employees were not to yield to the Indigenous language. So, Van Riebeeck and his colleagues would have tried to include as many Dutch words as possible in the conversation. We are going to scour the Journals of Jan van Riebeeck for first-hand knowledge of what happened in those early settler days. So, this, and the fact that he had set foot at the Cape before, for only eighteen (18) days, means that he, too, knew nothing about Kora (the Cape Khoikhoi language).

Please allow us to point out some important procedures that we are employing. We are not trying to impress academics, so we will not be splitting any hairs. We aim to communicate with the ordinary humans on the ground, in a direct and as simple a way as possible. So, we will try our best to limit the technical (linguistic). A technical term, however, reduces the whole explanation to a single word. 

The term “phonology,” which we will come across often, means, according to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, the science of speech sounds, including esp. the history and theory of sound changes in a language or in two or more related languages: the phonetics and phonemics of a language at a particular time. Phonetics and phonemics are also strange to the masses that do not venture into high-brow stuff. 

So, let us see what Merriam-Webster has to say about them. Phonetics is ‘the system of speech sounds of a language or group of languages: the study and systematic classification of the sounds made in spoken utterance. The practical application of this science to language study and phonemics is (we are simplifying) the specific sound in a language, irrespective of how it is written. 

For example, the vowels in English words such as us, some, country, and what are all the same as the vowels in Kaaps words such as gat, lam, and kas. To use the technical term would save much time. So, when we use a linguistic term, we will give as short a meaning as possible – often just another word we are more acquainted with – in brackets.

Also, we know that the Khoikhoi at the Cape had met the crews of many European nations and that a Pidgin consisting of only a few words with respect to bartering was used with Portuguese, English, and Dutch. Our main concern is the origin of the language, Kaaps, which no one can argue was influenced to a great extent by Dutch.

Again, we know of the ship with 250 men that wrecked at Mouille Point. They stayed for four months without incident. The Khoikhoi must have picked up some Dutch words from them. Two years later, the Haarlem wrecked somewhere near Milnerton, and that crew stayed at the Cape for an entire year until they were picked up in 1647 and returned to their fatherland. Again, we are not going to bore you with all the academic details. We are probably using the best system to acquire true knowledge. 

So, we are using comparison to establish a representative picture of the situation. Using the facts of perception as they universally apply, we infer other facts. (By inference, the knowledge is acquired by beginning with a proven fact and deducing in a scientific-like way a second proven fact. Inference is like the way of mathematics. You cannot make a statement without saying which proof you have used. 

If you have not already downloaded, free of charge, Kora, please use the URL given below.

https://sahistory.org.za/archive/kora-lost-khoisan-language-early-cape-and-gariep-menan-du-plessis