ABSTRACT
Afrikaans developed in South Africa out of a Dutch stem as a result of interaction between European colonists, who arrived there in 1652, slaves imported from Africa and Asia, and indigenous Khoisan people. By the 1930 there were fewer than two million people who spoke Afrikaans as a first language. Yfet the language would achieve something exceptional. Heinz Kloss observed in 1977: ‘Unless we consider Arabic an African tongue … .Afrikaans is the only non-European/non-Asiatic language to have attained full university status and to be used in all branches of life and learning.… All other university languages have their main basis in either Europe or Asia.’ He added: ‘There is a strong likelihood that of the new university languages outside Europe (new ones as against old ones such as Japanese, Arabic or Chinese) only Hindi, used by some 250 million speakers, Indonesian by 100 million speakers, and Hebrew match the development of Afrikaans.’ 1
