The First Afrikaans

Abstract

ABSTRACT Christo van Rensburg is a leading academic in the field of the Afrikaans language and its origins. Having presented on the subject at the Rethinking Khoe and San Indigeneity, Language and Culture in the Transformation of School and Tertiary Education in South Africa seminar at the University of Johannesburg in 2018, van Rensburg had intended to submit an article for this special edition for Critical Arts. Due to his untimely death shortly after the seminar this was not possible. The editors thus decided to reprint the first chapter of his book Finding Afrikaans, published by Lapa in 2018 (ISBN 978-0-7993-8477-2), and financially supported by the Afrikaanse Taalraad. As the chapter has been published in this edition in isolation, outside of the book's framework, it has been amended by Julie Grant to include additional references and relevant contextual information. Although, the book is less formal in style than a standard academic text, the research and findings are robust. The book's informal style, and the fact that it is published in English and Afrikaans makes it extremely accessible, particularly to our Khoi and San colleagues. The chapter below provides an alternative version of the emergence of Afrikaans and lays the foundation for the academic study in this issue by Hans du Plessis and Julie Grant, which arose following the presentation by du Plessis entitled Afrikaans on the Frontier: Two Early Afrikaans Dialects which was twinned with van Rensburg's presentation at the symposium.