Tag Archives: audience

Why Afrikaans needs vampiere and ongediertes

Vampire by Vyle

Afrikaans faces a dilemma. How can it remain relevant to a younger generation while maintaining linguistic standards?

Writers of Afrikaans teen fiction are using slang and English words in order to appeal to the youth. Purists obviously see this as a debasement of the language. It’s known as taalvermenging , a contentious issue that regularly pops up on the letters page of newspapers. Back in 2002, a 17-year-old Jackie Nagtegaal published Daar’s vis in die punch and sparked a debate that divided literature professors.  André Brink called it a rejuvenation of the language while Dan Roodt said that Afrikaans had hit an all-time low.

Part of the problem is that Afrikaans caries a historical burden. Because it is spoken by a community that supported a racist system, the language is tinged with verkramptheid. To many, Afrikaans is still associated with conservative white people even though that connotation is statistically inaccurate* . When an actor speaks an old-fashioned English dialect, he sounds sophisticated, even romantic. If he speaks formal Afrikaans , he’ll seem conservative and unfashionable.

So is it possible to side step these negative connotations? I think so.

It should be possible to get a young audience to warm to formal Afrikaans if it’s a dialect so antique that it isn’t associated with their parents and grandparents’ generation.  An interesting example of this trick is seen in HBO’s True Blood.

Bill Compton is the romantic lead in the show. He’s also a vampire that once lived as a human in mid-19th-century Louisiana and fought for the South in the Civil War. That means he’s a confederate soldier with an accent that makes you think of a front-porch-sittin’ slave owner. But all of the potentially hazardous connotations are somehow sidestepped because he’s a vampire, and chivalrous, and 160 years old.

So Radio Sonder Grense should consider creating a radio drama with a teen novel tie-in about dashing vampires and beasts set in a contemporary South African town. It shouldn’t be a Twilight knock-off, but it will need a good dose of young love and drama.

The supernatural beings are all a century old, which explains their use of old-fashioned Afrikaans. In fact, there’s the potential to base their dialect on the writing style of N.P. van Wyk Louw. He was part of the Dertigers, an innovative group of Afrikaans poets who gained notoriety in the early decades of the 20th century. Louw’s work often explored love and sensuality via supernatural imagery. Gestaltes en Diere, published in 1942, portrays dark leopards, alcoholics, sphinxes and wolves. It’s an ideal foundation for a new fantasy series.

I’ll leave you with a cool passage from “Ballade van die nagtelike ure” :

Om elfuur was jou liggaam
die honger en dors in my,
as jou skewe papier-kalot
ver deur die danssaal gly.
Om twaalfuur was jy ‘n ligte brug,
‘n hoë, gevaarlike gang
bo my klein verwildering
tussen pyn en sterwe gehang.
- N.P. van Wyk Louw 1937

* A 2002 survey revealed that of the six million South Africans who claim Afrikaans as their first language, only 42% are white  (Giliomee, 2004: 623).

Videos from Malawi

 

Earlier this week I shared the best moments of the trip to Lake of Stars with you. Here are some video clips I recorded there and on the way back.

At the start of the clip, you’ll see the nice breakfast I got every morning. One of the best aspects of the meals I got in Malawi is that it almost always included these round chips that look like banana slices. Unlike the starch-paste chips you’re served everywhere in South Africa except for Steers, these Malawi chips are made from potatoes, albeit small ones.

I was walking around town and came across this shop called Vampire Electronics. Most of the shop signs I saw were painted and included an extended list of every service they offer. While I was taking a clip of the sign, the owner called me inside. Here he explains why he called his shop Vampire Electronics. Warning: content on the small screen may offend sensitive viewers.

This girl, who said her name was Fanny, wanted to sing her Chichewa translation of the hit from The Bodyguard to me .

The Chinese Cultural Delegation’s performance was one of the pleasant surprises at Lake of Stars. It was interesting seeing these cultural ambassadors, considering China’s increasing involvement in Malawi. The impression that I got from speaking to Malawians is that cross-cultural relations between the two countries require some work. One guy in the crowd kept shouting “You’re bad in bed” in Chichewa during the performance. Others, who were more jovial, shouted “Fank you!”

After Lake of Stars was over, we needed to find a cheap way to get from Mangochi to Blantyre, a distance of approximately 200 km.  We took this minibus taxi, which played some good tunes.

On our way to Malawi, a Mozambican official stopped our bus right after we crossed the bridge over the Zambezi. He wanted to arrest one of the passengers for not wearing a shirt. On our way back we were stopped at the same spot. This time the official wanted to arrest a woman because she did not look enough like her passport photo. I sneaked a recording of it. You’ll see at the end of the clip that the bus driver manages to lure him away by promising to buy him a drink.

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The video clips were recorded with the Nokia N8. I hadn’t used it much since I won it at TEDx Cape Town, but it became a trusted companion on this trip thanks to its Carl Zeiss lens and long battery life.

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