Hollywood star Charlize Theron has come under fire for calling her native Afrikaans a ‘dying language’.
Theron joked that “about 44 people are talking,” and said it was “not very helpful.”
As she commented on the SmartLess podcast, she said she grew up speaking only Afrikaans in South Africa and learned English at 19, which is why she speaks with an American accent.
Some of the millions of Afrikaans speakers in South Africa were outraged.
Afrikaans singer Steve Hofmeyr says the language has the best curse, telling TimesLive that Afrikaans is “live and alive”. It also condemns attempts to change the medium of instruction from Afrikaans to English at historically Afrikaans universities.
The South African website News 24, quoting fellow critic and actor Tim Theron, said that Afrikaans “is not dead… new songs and poems are written every day, movies are made.” It is said that
On Twitter, there were comments accusing Charlize Theron of being “ashamed of her roots” and “seeking recognition from black people”, while “Afrikaans is strongly associated with apartheid” and “once Africans Some people applauded her words because they were used to oppress.
The great political importance of the Afrikaans language in South Africa stems from the fact that during the decades when the white minority ruled, a series of racist policies called apartheid was put in place to suppress the black majority. It did its job when it was introduced.
“Afrikaans, a language that was formed here in Africa, became a dividing language under apartheid,” artist and cultural analyst Professor Pitika Nturi told the BBC.
The 1976 Soweto uprising against the apartheid regime resulted in at least 170 deaths, mostly schoolchildren, largely due to the forced language in schools.
13% of South Africans speak their native language, mostly white people descended from Dutch, German and French settlers in the 17th century, and people of mixed race known locally as Colors.
During the apartheid era, only English, Dutch, and Afrikaans were recognized as the official languages of the country, and indigenous languages were suppressed. adopted. Afrikaans, English, isiNdebele, isiXhosa, isiZulu, Sepedi, Sesotho, Setswana, Siswati, Tshivenḓa and Xitsonga.
The BBC’s Audrey Brown said: “I love the word, but I hate how it has been used to oppress us, how it describes oppression and evokes traumatic memories and experiences. ”
Today, many South Africans say not enough progress has been made towards true linguistic equality, with some students campaigning for more university classes to be taught in African languages.
But that doesn’t mean Afrikaans is a dying language, says Professor Pitika Nturi.
Like Hofmeyr, I like Afrikaans for its expressiveness, its poetic expressiveness. He also laughs, “He’s very good at insulting people, and that’s why he’s beautiful.”
“Charlize Theron is back and she should stay here for a while, it might help her!” she said.
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