Arabic Afrikaans

Encyclopedia : A : AR : ARA : Arabic Afrikaans

---

Arabic Afrikaans was a form of Afrikaans that was written in Arabic script.

One of the best examples of this literature was Uiteensetting van die Godsdiens ("Exposition of the Religion"), a book laying out Islamic traditions according to the Hanafi religious law. Written by Abu Bakr Effendi, it was printed using Arabic script throughout, but contained transcriptions of Afrikaans.

Effendi, originally from Kurdistan, was sent in 1862 by the Ottoman sultan to the Cape of Good Hope to teach the Muslim community of the Cape Malays. From 1862–1869 he studied the local language use and compiled the book, which was finally printed and published in 1877 by the state press in Istanbul. For this reason, it gives an invaluable insight into the use of Afrikaans in the so-called "Slams" (slang for Islamic) neighbourhoods of Cape Town in that period. It is also significant, since this community did not have Dutch as mother tongue and were therefore mostly unaffected by its orthography. The book, totalling 354 pages, was divided into 8 parts, each dealing with a specific part of Islamic law:

1. ritual cleansing (pp. 2–66)
2. ritual prayer (pp. 66–219)
3. religious tax (pp. 219–258)
4. fasting (pp. 258–284)
5. slaughtering of livestock (pp. 284–302)
6. religious prohibitions (pp. 302–344)
7. drink (pp. 344–349)
8. hunting (pp. 349–354)

Adriaanus van Selms, a Dutch scholar and Semitic researcher, published a translation of Effendi's work in 1979. Since the original work presented spoken Afrikaans without using vowels, van Selms's biggest task was to decipher which Afrikaans words were being referred to.

The apartheid regime never publicly acknowledged these and similar facts, since Afrikaans was purported to be of Afrikaner and Christian origin, and therefore a unique treasure of the Afrikaners. Today efforts are being made to assess Afrikaans and its origin much more honestly, and to accept it as a truly multicultural and (at least partly) creole language.

References

• "Abu Bakr se 'Uiteensetting van die Godsdiens'", A. van Selms, 1979, North-Holland Publishing Company, Amsterdam/Oxford/New York. ISBN 0720484502

 

---

From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Original article here. Support Wikipedia by contributing or donating.
All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License See Wikipedia Copyrights for details.

Search Titles

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

A

B

C

D

E

F

G

H

I

J

K

L

M

N

O

P

Q

R

S

T

U

V

W

X

Y

Z

?