Every time I have to give my telephone number in America, my Afrikaans accent hangs out like a school boy’s shirt after break. You see, my number starts with 443. All goes well with the two fours (I can imitate a perfect British accent). But once my tongue encounters that three, it comes out as “free”. Time and again. And this happens often enough, because many American shops use your telephone number for their loyalty programmes and therefor ask for your telephone number ad nauseam.
Does one ever become accent free? Can you as an ordinary Afrikaans speaker ever sound like Charlize Theron without access to language coaches? After more than three years in America I still don’t know.
The specific path that I have followed so far across the ocean does not really help me to speak English like a native speaker. I always say: I may stay in America, but I live in South Africa. Instead of absorbing the language of the people around me, I sink deeper into Afrikaans as the days go by.
Sick with missing plovers and dung beetles, the smell of rain on a dirt road and biltong, braaivleis and Mrs Ball’s, I started an Afrikaans blog en then an Afrikaans business named oolfant.com. In America. Fancy that!
I publish at least one Afrikaans article every week. I have also developed online courses in Afrikaans language learning and how to write in Afrikaans. It is mostly South African home-school moms who buy my courses and read my articles. But there are a few mom’s in America, Georgia, England, Ireland and New Zealand who are my clients.
Interviews are my latest endeavour. Technology, America’s fast internet and the fact that I can purchase software in dollars all contribute to making things possible.
I simply cannot get used to suddenly hearing Afrikaans in our American town house. Maybe it is because I live in a community where I do not hear Afrikaans that much. There are many Afrikaans people around Atlanta here in the USA and also in parts of Texas, so I hear, but Afrikaans remains a rarity in Maryland where we live.
It is different for my sister and her family in Brisbane, Australia. A few months ago, their church even held a proper farmers’ kermis with milk tarts and koeksisters and boerewors and biltong. Apparently, they made a huge profit.
For these reasons, it makes me truly happy to be able to still work in Afrikaans. And still my heart jumps with joy whenever a voice from far away Africa sounds from my computer and it is a voice with rolling R’s and guttural G’s and the double negative and that starts sentences with “Ja-nee”.
My brother-in-law who is a house doctor in Brisbane says that it often happens that a new patient walks into his rooms, starts speaking and, after a while, tilts her head and asks in English: “But you have an accent. Are you from South Africa?”
And then, when he starts speaking Afrikaans, she starts crying: “We have only been in Australia for a short while now and I yearn for home. It is such a relief to be able to speak to my doctor in Afrikaans.”
Whether I do the right thing when I continue to live in Afrikaans I do not know. My sister says that it is a tender subject for many Afrikaans-speaking people in their congregation. Although the church in Brisbane has an Afrikaans service very early on Sunday mornings, the main service is in English. Even the minister, who also hails from South Africa, preaches in English, heavy Afrikaans accent and all. The congregation’s annual Christmas service is tremendously popular. The Afrikaans people then fill the pews to capacity and sing Stille nag, heilige nag at the top of their voices, tears of longing running down their cheeks.
Many parents there still speak Afrikaans, but the children are gradually shifting to English. It is a good thing, most people say, because they now live in a new country; if the children want to be truly happy, they should integrate completely and as soon as possible. Afrikaans immigrants should not stand out in Australia like lumps in a white sauce. Smooth integration as soon as possible – that is what is necessary.
I am reading the autobiography of the Russian-born author Vladimir Nabokov, Speak, Memory. After he eventually settled in America, he abandoned the Russian of his childhood days and started writing high literature in English. However, he kept wearing his alienage openly. He continually apologised for speaking English so poorly, never bought a house and lived his whole live as an exile in hotels and rented houses.
He wrote that nothing but the exact replica of the environment of his childhood would have satisfied him. He would never succeed in precisely duplicating his memories, so why even try?
Nabokov believed even in 1927, nine years after he had left Russia, that he would be able to return to Russia in the following decade; that his fatherland would welcome him with open arms, terribly sorry about its silly flirtation with communism. Alas, he could never return to Russia – not even to visit. And 22 years after he had fled Russia, his first English book was published.
It is probably not that weird that I still want to live in Afrikaans after only three years away from South Africa. Strictly speaking, I cannot even dare say that I am an exile. We are in America thanks to a work opportunity for my husband. He is an engineer and people always say that engineers are the world’s largest group of migrant labourers. They must always pack up and move to where the projects are.
Just like Nabokov I firmly believe at this stage: One day I will go home. I am not prepared to grow old without Afrikaans. Not yet.
Does that make me an idealist? Or an idiot?
