hi all.

as thread says as i need a little help with a delicate matter.

buy a donkey.

colin

look for Swans posts on here ( usually in Muppet forum) he lives in Egoli, that's Jo'burg to you, bro :D

Bie dankie, Mynheer

I can also help if you don't come right with Swan.

Garth.

Maybe ;)

A few corrections,
DT - it's Afrikaans. Has the SPCA approved your purchase? Is it for farm or personal use? :) buy a donkey = koop 'n donkie
FB - It's Jhb to us too!
Close with "Bie dankie, Mynheer", it's "Baie dankie, meneer". Did you live here?

Swan, I think the buy a donkey was the phoenetic way of spelling baie dankie :D

Interesting.... I'll never be able to thank someone in Afrikaans again! :)

right then

swan, fb, ga, sorry for insulting your native tongue but apart from bubba jarn (sp) its the only afrikaans i know.

i have a FRIEND (get the picture) who is struggling to win the affections of a lady friend. HE thinks that a few suitable words or phrases may help sweep her off her feet.

if you can help HIM please post a few with phonetic spellings please.

baie danke, meneer (on HIS behalf)

Hmm, interesting.
ak het yo leef - i love you
ak vill die res fun may leve met yo vees - I want to spend the rest of my life with you

Fraid I'm not too creative so if there are particular terms of endearment your "friend" is looking for, let me know. :)

Ja! hickedy splikendy joisticof

how's that???


BB;)

Got the yes part, fraid the rest is over my head!

Interesting to read this variant of Dutch :)

ak vill die res fun may leve met yo vees
ik wil de rest van mijn leven met jou wezen

Spot the differences ;)

EB - I'm no history expert but Afrikaans is indeed of Dutch origin, with a bit of English, French, German, etc. mixed in for good measure. I can get the jist of Dutch if it's not spoken too quickly, can't really read it though.

ik wil de rest van mijn leven met jou wezen

"ek wil die res van my lewe met jou wees" is the Afrikaans version.

Swan

Are there many Scoobs in JHB ?

Been there on holiday recently & seen a DBM in full livery just north of JHB. Wasn't you by any chance ?

Cheers

Mark

Jhb has the most Impreza's and I'd guess Subaru's in general in SA. I must admit not knowing how many in total. I think there are around 40 STi VII's and guessing at least double that WRX VII's, also a number of VI's and a few earlier ones too. DBM?

thanks swan

it doesn't matter about creativity as she's easily impressed. i'll let you know how HE gets on

Howzit bro or should I say Yebo, Bubba.

Almost lived there, spent a week/10 days a month there for last 7 years until October this year when I took voluntary redundancy from my work (Int'l bank), and know and love the place as well as SA in general. The high point of my life so far was dinner with President Mandela in 1995...

It could be worse, you might be living in Buffalo City....

Thank you for correcting my spelling, picked it up phonetically as seems appropriate given the history of Afrikaans.

For the language scholars above, it comes from Platte Deutsch, or low German, which is also where Dutch evolved from originally ( flame suit time, but true:D)and was then developed by the dutch farmers who arrived in the 1600's into the Cape under the governorship of Simon van der Stel.

It was originally a completely spoken language in that no one would read or write it, all formal communication being done in formal dutch, and it was over a hundred years before anyone tried to set it down in writing in a text book. It took in words from Africa and the Cape Malay colony and gradually evolved into its own stand alone language. Today, as Theo noticed, there are many similarities still with Dutch , but it is not so easy for Dutch people to read. However,if they hear it spoken or read the newspapers phonetically then they can understand it very well.

Cheers

EK IS LIEF VIR JOU !!!!

FB, I think you're gonna get lucky...
:)

Swan,

Please tell me that WRX Baker is a kugel rather than a moffie boy:D

FB, actually it is pretty easy for Dutch speaking people to read it as well as understand it.

A rather famous SA singer is Johannes Kerkorrel. He regularly visits Belgium/Holland, and there is no translation needed. Afrikaans to us sounds like a "cute" version (no disrespect intended) of Dutch. Some of the traditional songs we learn as kids (Sarie Marijs) are actually Afrikaans.

A good site about him is: http://www.musiek.co.za/johanneskerkorrel.asp

Some nice quotes on there as well like

:D (translation: it's not size that matters, it's the, the..., erm... no, it's the size alright)

Each time you refresh the above page you get a new quote BTW, and they are mighty funny :)

OK, just found a good page on the history of Afrikaans.

1) it all started with the Dutch farmers & sailors working for the VOC and using the Cape as a midway station towards India. They were mostly from the South of the Netherlands, speaking a lot of different dialects
2) the base language thus is 17th century Dutch. Not sure where FB got the term "platte Deutch" but of course most languages that are spoken north of France are Germanic from origin (Dutch, German, Swedish etc).
3) the language developped in a totally different way from there on, via a process called "deflexion" (simplification if you wish)

The main differences with Dutch now are:

. acopation of the "t" (Dutch: "product", Afrikaans "produk")
. syncopation of "d" (Dutch: "schouder", Afrikaans "skouer")
. using "sk" instead of "sch" (Dutch: "school", Afrikaans "skool")
. using "s" instead of "z" (Dutch : "zuid", Afrikaans "suid")
. use of "y" instead of "ij" (Dutch: "mij", Afrikaans "my")
. double negations ("hy kan nie slaap nie")

And a few more but that would take too long and bore you stiff ;)

Afrikaans apparently is now spoken by about 6 million people, half of them coulored people BTW.

Not sure if this helps the original poster though :D

Theo

Got it (platte deutsch) from a museum on the Afrikaans language, and the Afrikaner people in Paarl in the Western Cape, on one of my many visits there.

Basically it's the language that Dutch farmers, or boers, used to speak as not all immigrants were posh folk like the Company men, hence the "picturesque" form of dutch that it seems like today.
All my comments are based on info from there or on the explanations of Afrikaner friends down in SA.I get unbiased explanations from them as I'm Irish, so not an English pom or a rooinek, or not completely anyway. We fought on both sides of the Boer wars, hey, if someone wants a fight and they'll pay for it as well, great :D

Simon van der Stel was the first governor of the Cape and was sent there by the VOC. The park in the centre of Capetown is still called the Company's Gardens commemorating its origin from when the Company used to grow fresh fruit and veg to supply it's ships on the way to the East Indies.

A great place to visit in relation to all this is Stellenbosch (Stel's wood)just 20 minutes outside Capetown, centre of the biggest wine region in SA, and home to the most prestigious university in SA, for law anyway, which teaches in Afrikaans.Fantastic scenery, fantastic food and wine, great weather and a really cosmopolitan group of people these days . Van der Stel established the town as the first European designed town in SA outside Capetown just across the Eerste Rivier (first river, very literal these lot) and stipulated that all settlers had to plant a set number of oaks each, so now the streets are full of beautiful ancient oaks mixed in with the electric blue of the Jacaranda trees, which should have just finished their displays, eh Swan?

Anyway, I'm sure I could pull loads of stuff off the web as well if I wanted to, but that doesn't help dicky ticker. Bets of luck with the challenge m8. Afrikaner men reckon that their women are the best looking in the world ( well they would, wouldn't they) and I have to say that a lot of them are mighty fine - tall, athletic, blonde etc.. but the dutchies are very protective of their womenfolk so don't expect an easy ride :D

It's making me feel like going back especially as it's about 2 degrees here

FB, my comments were not meant as a dig or negative or whatever.

I consulted a Dutch university web page to find out a bit more, because my memory is a joke. I did a (short) study about SA history back in uni days, but as you can imagine, most books were focussing on the political issues, not the linguistic ones.

I had never heard of the term "platte Deutsch" that's all, but I do know that Deutsch/Dutch/Diets are very related terms, often mixed up, often misunderstood. In fact, still today the Dutch national anthem has a phrase "ben ik van Dietsen bloed".

Fact is, Dutch was pretty much an established language in 1600, in fact, the earliest writings in "middle Dutch" (Middel-Nederlands) are situated in 1100 AD IIRC.

Anyway, all this blurb aside, not really trying to prove a point, the more I read about SA, the more I would want to visit it, as it must be a paradise nature/landscape/culture wise.

Theo

wasn't a dig back either M8 and certainly not trying to denigrate Dutch, which i'm sure is and was a fine language, even if it does sound to me like someone trying to talk with a throat full of catarrh :D:D

Go to SA asap, plus places like Namibia, you'll absolutely love it, it's an amazing place. I spend my whole time trying to convince people here looking for winter sun to forget places like Florida and to go to SA instead . Cheaper, more culture, better scenery, better food,only 1 hour time difference, great hotels,drive on the correct side ie left :p:D etc the list goes on. If you ever decide to go drop me an e-mail I can personally recommend IMHO best pubs, restaurants, hotels, game parks etc after years of painstaking research :D.

Been to Capetown about 30 times so far and would go there like a shot (no pun intended) if there was the right job. One day.

Some sites to get more into on travelling in SA:
Official SA Tourism site
M-Web Travel
Worldonline Travel
SA Tourism

WRT the Afrikaans language, came across the following:
"The language Afrikaans has it's roots from the Dutch language although it has been influenced by many languages that include: English, Malay, German, Portuguese, French and some African languages. Up until the 19th century Afrikaans acted only as the spoken language and Dutch was used as the formal and written language. On 14 August 1875 the GRA was, an organization that promoted the Afrikaans language, was formed by Rev. S.J. Du Toit. The first full translation of the Bible into Afrikaans was made in 1933. According to Act 8 of 1925 it became the official language with Dutch and English. With the new constitution of South Africa it was again chosen as one of the official languages of South Africa."

You a poos eh!

Trying to make friends and influence people? Must be very lonely!
:)