6 Kaaps, the Name

6 Kaaps, the Name

© by Peter Snyders

 As with all new languages, it is always the youth who take the initiative, such that the Khoikhoi youth and all later generations of youth transformed the pidgin into a creole and eventually into the full-grown language of Kaaps as we know it today. As we study Kaaps from its origin and through the other phases up till today, we will encounter more differences from that of Afrikaans.

 Calling Kaaps Kaaps-Afrikaans is therefore a misnomer and misleading. This is nothing, again, but an attempt to sneak Afrikaans into its true origin (Kaaps) to extend its predestined disappearance. It is not possible to make one language out of Kaaps and Afrikaans because they do not share the same way of life. Afrikaners are mainly privileged and academic, while Kaapsers are mostly marginalised. There has also been too much oppression of Kaaps by the Afrikaner elite in the past to make it possible to discharge all the inappropriate censure towards Kaaps.

 Kaapsers share the same history as Afrikaners, but they do so on different sides of the historical line. Apartheid ensured that the two groups of speakers developed in their own way, separately. It was and is only to swell the numbers of Afrikaans-speakers by extending its existence and thrusting Afrikaans onto Black people and Coloureds. Despite all this disowning of an ethnic group's mother tongue, Kaaps maintained its uniqueness because it is a spiritual language with no interference by academics.

 Other factors are not conducive to the two languages being able to merge into one language. This is especially so when the two people have little in common. Kaapsers and Afrikaners do not share the same intellectual training, once again due to an oppressive regime. The different speakers do not share the same philosophy, nature of beauty, art, and taste regarding themselves. The knowledge, belief, and behaviour of Kaapsers are different from that of Afrikaners strictly because of the separation of races by the utterly deluded Apartheid mode of rule.

 Language determines a way of life. It is a means applied by the group to name their experiences. Once something has been designated, it goes through the process of determining what should be generally accepted as customary beliefs, social forms, and material traits of a racial, religious, or social nature. These characteristic features of the everyday existence or a way of life of a specific isolated group of people cannot be shared by people in a different place or by people who do not share similar attitudes, values, goals, and practices.

 If such a language exists, it can only be the ‘classroom Afrikaans.’ For many Kaapsers, this is the only place where they were (and still are) exposed to the Afrikaans of Afrikaners. As we shall see, the Kaaps of Coloureds differ substantially from the Afrikaans of whites. A first-language Kaapser stands little chance of obtaining good marks unless he or she masters all the avoidance techniques.

 Some of the Kaaps have been stolen by Afrikaans. In linguistics, if you use the ideas and writings of someone without acknowledging your source, it is called plagiarism or stolen sources. This is because Afrikaners considered their language a pure language and called Afrikaans, beschaafd (educated, cultivated, refined, civilised, well-spoken, polished, accomplished, and cultured).

 Afrikaans is becoming spiritual. Look at how they freely allow Kaaps in Turkish translations of a series. Look at how they also use a smaller, more understandable English word, and how their language now flows.

 Afrikaaps is another misleading name for Kaaps, especially if Afri- means Afrikaans. This term is supposedly nothing more than a slightly different word in Kaaps-Afrikaans. If Afrikaaps means Afrika (Africa) plus Kaaps, it would make sense as an African language that originated in Africa or originated at the Cape of Good Hope. Both particulars are correct concerning Kaaps.

 The name Kaaps is enough because it says it all. Since Kaaps – like ALL languages in the world – is rule-governed, the name Kaaps uses the widely used Kaaps rule of using the shorter word wherever convenient. Afrikaaps, if you exchange the p with an n, is Afrikaans. So Afrikaaps is a deceptive name.

 Steve Biko was right: our minds are still in the chains of colonialism. That is where true slavery still makes us powerless. We must remove this restraint from our minds. We must grab the whip that flouts our understanding and use it to progressively remove the subtle authority and power still in control of the minds of most people, irrespective of race or class.

 We must acknowledge, affirm, and claim our language for what it truly is: a real language. Kaaps conforms in all ways to the nature of a language. It is not impure. It is mixed like every other language in the world. It has more spirit – the vital principle of a true language – than modern Western languages that are controlled by human intellectualism.

 Kaaps was appropriately named by Adam Small.