Talk:Arabic Afrikaans

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This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 28 August 2019 and 12 December 2019. Further details are available on the course page. Peer reviewers: Keenan Gorski.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 14:37, 16 January 2022 (UTC)

Nice article!

Hey, glad to see someone's put this article up. Nice to see the true/inclusive history of Afrikaans starting to emerge after Apartheid mythology. Also, I've often heard that there were successive waves to "Dutchify" Afrikaans. Ie, it started off as a creole (of Dutch, Khoi, Malay etc) and that once Afrikaner Nationalism got going all the non-European influences were removed (So that modern Afrikaans is actually more like Dutch than 19th Century Afrikaans). Is that true? Would be interesting to know. Joziboy 4 May 2006, 16:44 (UTC)

This was completely news to me (obviously, having been brought up in a Afrikaner-Calvanistic household), but its immensely fascinating. I'm tempted to go visit the Cape Archives to see if they have anything more on it; even a reproduction of the original book would be incredible. dewet|✉ 17:24, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

It seems the Cape Archives have a copy of his book:

DEPOT        KAB
SOURCE       Library
TYPE         Book
REFERENCE    297 ABU                                                               
DESCRIPTION  Abubakr Effendi: Bayannuddin; a Hanafee treatise on Islam             
             (Afrikaans written in Arabic script).                                 
STARTING     0000                                                                  
ENDING       0000                                                                  
REMARKS      Constantinople, 1869. Accession number: 6958.

I agree, nice article. For another piece of (possible) apartheid-era mythology, see Dirkie Uys ... it seems that the version we were taught at school (am I giving away my age here?) may not be the true version. Elf-friend 12:12, 5 May 2006 (UTC)

Hi, I'm from Turkey and I was surprised to learn this small piece of history, nice work! I also lived in the Netherlands for 5.5 years and it's nice to be able to understand some Afrikaans. When I was a child my uncle was doing business with RSA and I couldn't understand a bit of the language. ANYWAY, if the date is correct, i.e. 1862, the Ottoman Sultan at that time was Sultan Abdülaziz who came to throne in 1861. Off course the previous sultan could have issued the order, which was Sultan Abdülmecid. Do you think an edit is necessary? --Gokhan 10:00, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

You should certainly add it (as well as to Abu Bakr Effendi), although we'd need to make sure which one it was. I still haven't gotten around to it, but I want to borrow the work by Van Selms from the National Library sometime. I'm sure it will be noted in there. dewet|✉ 13:22, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

Yes we need to find the correct sultan. We can also add the modern Turkish spelling of Abu Bakr Effendi as "Ebu Bekir Efendi" maybe. I can check the old book sellers here in Istanbul, maybe they will have a copy or translation. I also found a journalist who mentioned this briefly in her article back in Feb 2005. I sent her an email. --Gokhan 06:40, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

I've located the Van Selms translation in the National Library here in Cape Town, and I've updated the article with the information. It seems he did arrive in 1862, so the sultan isn't quite clear just yet. :-/ dewet|✉ 10:48, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

Hi Dew - nice addition, good work! About the sultan... normally there should a ferman about this voyage in some archive, because he couldn't come to South Africa without sultan's degree or some kind of document right? I'll try to find something. --Gokhan 11:30, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

Weird! An old teacher of mine once told me "baba" ("baby") came from Malay. You might like to get a Muslim Wikipedian (if there are still any around...) to link the chapter names to the appropriate Islamic articles (prayer to Assalaat, poor tax to Azzakaat etc). "19:30 He (Jesus) said: Verily I am a slave of Allah. He has given me the Scripture and made me a prophet. 19:31 And he has made me blessed wheresoever I be and has enjoined on me Salaat and Zakaat as long as I live." Zyxoas (talk to me - I'll listen) 16:38, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

I studied Afrikans for years in the late 70's. To say that the then regime denied the excistence of the influance of Arabic and other non-European languages is incorrect. The basis of the language is still Germanic, but acknowledgement was given to all the other influences. I was taught about the first scrips which were published in Arabic. 11.50, 10 October 2006

These days people like to add things about the previous regime, and everybody nod their heads in agreement. But to keep this true and scholarly on this Wiki, either cite your comment or remove it, as it only detracts from the rest of the article.

—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 41.241.24.13 (talk • contribs).

I agree with the previous statements, I too learned about the Arabic text in high school (early 70's) and it has always been considered a valuable document for studying the origins of Afrikaans. I don't know about 'baba', but words like 'piesang' (banana) and 'blatjang' (chutney) are decidedly Malay and have always been recognized as such. The claim that the previous government tried to hide this should be substantiated by a citation, or it should be removed since it does not contribute anything useful to this otherwise fascinating subject. It really does seem fashionable to blame anything one can make up on the 'apartheid regime', let's instead keep this an encyclopedia filled with facts, free of dubious assertions. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.40.236.107 (talk) 02:01, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

As you guys say, it's easy these days to diss the apartheid regime for things they never did. I mean, I don't like them, some of my family got really persecuted at one point by them even though they were Afrikaners, because they fought the system... but please, we need some accuracy and NPOV here. I changed the main article saying that the apartheid regime "never" acknowledged the other influences on Afrikaans to saying they were "reluctant to openly acknowledge" those influences (which is in part true).

Everyone in agreement, or should we remove this half-truth entirely? -- WolfieInu 19:16, 22 June 2008 (UTC)

South Africa-related Wikipedia articles are becoming less and less neutral in my opinion as they are becoming a forum for an anti-apartheid reintepretation of history. Things that aren't accurate are added just to fit the narrative. Simply because apartheid is now disapproved of doesn't mean things can be made up about it on Wikipedia.

In truth the Malay role in the formation of Afrikaans has always been known. As a concrete example (forgive the pun) the Afrikaans Language Monument at Paarl has one of its main elements dedicated to the Malay component of the language.

And what about the following sentence? Yet the role of Arabic Afrikaans in this emancipatory movement is as yet unclear. This is entirely speculative in my opinion. Is there any evidence that Arabic Afrikaans played any (significant) role? It is introduced as if it must have had a role, but worded in a way that doesn't need any evidence. It's like writing "the role of Elvis in the election of Baack Obama is not yet clear".

Image

• Could someone with access to the book please get a clear image on to this sight. I think everyone would be interested. Also the Afrikaans version of the article compares the language of the Efendi Abu Bakr book with modern Afrikaans, would anyone like to put that here as well? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.49.242.230 (talk • contribs) 08:51, 14 May 2007

  It would be nice of the Arabic bits could be shown in Arabic script (as well), as I guess they were in the original book. Or was it all transcribed to Latin characters from the start? Classical geographer 07:53, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

•  Done for the Koran extract. Anthony Appleyard (talk) 21:41, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

Unicode support

It's not clear for me, do this alphabet has some features not supported by the Unicode?

If yes, could you list them, I'm ready ho help with proposal to Unicode commitee to improve that limitations! --Üñţïf̣ļëŗ (see also:ә? Ә!) 10:29, 19 April 2012 (UTC)

• From what I can tell, it's all covered. The remark on the page about Unicode not supporting multiple Harakat is incorrect, and likely a font/renderer issue on the author's machine. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 93.89.81.71 (talk) 15:40, 2 October 2013 (UTC)

Image

I'm not sure the image on the right provides a very good example of Arabic Afrikaans, and it may not actually be Arabic Afrikaans. The translation provided at the bottom "Vote for Ohlsson. Plump for Ohlsson" is also very incomplete (quite apart from saying the same thing twice). What I read in bold Arabic script at the top in fact looks more like transliterated English: ڤوت فر هستر اولسون - vūt fr mstr 'ūlsūn (= 'vote for Mister Ohlsson' - only the long vowels are written in everyday Arabic). Perhaps the first three words were indeed used in Arabic Afrikaans (and perhaps local election posters were at the time in English only - this was evidently from Cape Town), but in that case it's an untypical example of the language. I've also tried to decipher the other lines (which aren't translated), and I've a sneaking suspicion the language may simply be Arabic, with admixtures of English (the words ڤوت هستر اولسون = 'vote Mister Ohlsson' appear once again, in the fourth and fifth lines). Perhaps significantly, it's signed 'A. B. Effendi, Arabic School', with no reference to Afrikaans. What I can also see are the words في بلد الكيپ - fī bld 'Āl-kīp (= 'in Town of the Cape (Cape Town)', with the first two words in pure Arabic - although nowadays the city is known as كيب تاون, as phonetic a translation as possible of the English name ('Kīb Tāūn'). However, I notice the use of the letters ڤ and پ, altered versions of 'f' and 'b' that are regularly used to render the sounds 'v' and 'p' (which don't occur in standard Arabic) - so maybe it is Arabic Afrikaans after all. Whatever the truth of the matter, I do think a better example could and should be provided.213.127.210.95 (talk) 16:13, 28 August 2017 (UTC)

200,000 speakers

There is a distinction between the *spoken* Cape Malay variety of Afrikaans, Arabic influences as there are, and the *written* standard of writing it in Arabic, which this article is about. Most of the 200,000 or so Cape Malays write in the Roman script. Writing system does not determine the language. The 200,000 figure and infobox seem to contradict this. As such, I’ll change it in due course, but leave this here for discussion. Harsimaja (talk) 14:09, 7 May 2020 (UTC)

Dubious

Where in the citation that says, the Eastern Arabic numerals were ever used? The literature provided had no mention of that. In addition to, the aforementioned numerals are closely related to the Middle Eastern culture and South Asia (a slightly modified version). --Mahmudmasri (talk) 23:03, 23 October 2022 (UTC)