The turning point for Afrikaans, in my opinion, was the Soweto Uprising in 1976 (the year after I left South Africa). This was a protest against the imposition of Afrikaans as the medium of instruction in African schools. This, and the government response to the protests, caused Afrikaans to be identified as the language of oppression, and many blacks adopted English as preferred. The backlash against Afrikaans caused unhappiness in the Coloured community, who (it can be argued) have a closer cultural heritage connection to Afrikaans than white South Africans.
Around 2008 I was travelling alone and went into a restaurant (a chain steakhouse) in Melkbosstrand for lunch and an internet connection. I was served by a young Afrikaans man, about 18, who knew no English. He appeared to be home-schooled. It struck me that he had been given a significant economic handicap.
In spite of the cultural, ideological and historical issues, community language preferences will evolve as the collective result of individuals optimizing their own perceived economic prospects.
I seldom disagree with you, but I here I do, and quite vocifouresly. Not all things are about rand and cents (homo economicus is presumed dead, after all). And it has been pretty emphatically proven that mother tongue education holds vast advantages, up until B-degree level at least.
I certainly don't disagree with you that mother tongue education holds a huge advantage. But think of the extreme: if you are the last speaker of a language, then the advantage of getting taught in your mother tongue can never outweigh the disadvantage of having no one to speak to. That is the point: as the pool of Afrikaans speakers (or any minority language) is shrinking, the advantages of mother tongue education become smaller. Many families do an implicit cost-benefit analysis, and choose the lingua franca.
I don't think economics always wins. As I say in the piece, there are fascinating exceptions, like Afrikaans during the twentieth century. Those case studies are worth studying. But at the moment, Afrikaans seem to follow a similar trend to many other smaller languages.
I hear you. I do, however, feel that some things you can't necessarily measure, or maybe you can, but I don't know how. For instance - there are definite benefits to plurality. I find a monolith culture to be boring, in any case. I will note culture, by nature, is kind of just teetering on past tense, since the next generation needs to pick it up and do with it what they want and need. And there I'll concede - the people are not beholden to the culture; it should be the other way around (or at least mostly).
But here's the thing, and maybe I'm being romantic, but I think mother tongue education, especially in South Africa, and especially for Xhosa, Zulu, Afrikaans and Sotho, is so extremely important. Apart from giving opportunities to those who might not otherwise have it, as Langenhoven wrote "soveel tale jy kan, soveel male jy man". But not just that, you write in Afrikaans and English, and you know that translating is not really translation, it really is, in a way, rewriting. Not all words can really, like really, be translated.
But all of this is moot, I think, if there are no opportunities for tertiary studies. I honestly don't understand why there can't be an Afrikaans university in the Western Cape, or a Xhosa one in the Eastern Cape, for instance. At least pre-grad (because of course published research is important).
I do sometimes wonder if I'm not just standing with my finger in a leaking dyke, though.
The question of a university is a different question, I think. Think of it, again, as demand and supply from the student's perspective: why study in Afrikaans when the (international) labour market demands you work in English? Twenty years ago you could perhaps still expect to work only in Afrikaans; that is unlikely today for most professions.
Another thing often overlooked when discussing language at a university: you surely want to be exposed to the best lecturers, professors that specialise in a specific research area. But the more you specialise, the smaller the talent pool. If you require the people you appoint to speak Afrikaans, you won't be able to find people to fill many specialities.
The latter I'll concede. Not convinced on the first point, though. I do think supply (at least in this case; or at least the idea of supply) forces demand somewhat. I suppose we are seeing a real life experiment (for both your points) playing out in Akademia.
However, I don't think anyone really believes they'll only work in x language; but I do think the idea that you have to also study in the language you might work in is pretty overstated. Unless you are working in academia, you'll quickly pick up the relevant jargon et al via osmosis.
Agree that Akademia will be a good experiment, and I hope they do well. There is room for more variety at the tertiary level: a few strong research universities, but many more teaching universities/colleges and training and technical institutions. Research universities, I would argue, need to be English, but there is certainly scope for the rest to include more language diversity.
I am reminded of the following article on how English became the language of Physics (and Science):
https://www.symmetrymagazine.org/article/how-english-became-the-language-of-physics?language_content_entity=und
The turning point for Afrikaans, in my opinion, was the Soweto Uprising in 1976 (the year after I left South Africa). This was a protest against the imposition of Afrikaans as the medium of instruction in African schools. This, and the government response to the protests, caused Afrikaans to be identified as the language of oppression, and many blacks adopted English as preferred. The backlash against Afrikaans caused unhappiness in the Coloured community, who (it can be argued) have a closer cultural heritage connection to Afrikaans than white South Africans.
Around 2008 I was travelling alone and went into a restaurant (a chain steakhouse) in Melkbosstrand for lunch and an internet connection. I was served by a young Afrikaans man, about 18, who knew no English. He appeared to be home-schooled. It struck me that he had been given a significant economic handicap.
In spite of the cultural, ideological and historical issues, community language preferences will evolve as the collective result of individuals optimizing their own perceived economic prospects.
I seldom disagree with you, but I here I do, and quite vocifouresly. Not all things are about rand and cents (homo economicus is presumed dead, after all). And it has been pretty emphatically proven that mother tongue education holds vast advantages, up until B-degree level at least.
I certainly don't disagree with you that mother tongue education holds a huge advantage. But think of the extreme: if you are the last speaker of a language, then the advantage of getting taught in your mother tongue can never outweigh the disadvantage of having no one to speak to. That is the point: as the pool of Afrikaans speakers (or any minority language) is shrinking, the advantages of mother tongue education become smaller. Many families do an implicit cost-benefit analysis, and choose the lingua franca.
I don't think economics always wins. As I say in the piece, there are fascinating exceptions, like Afrikaans during the twentieth century. Those case studies are worth studying. But at the moment, Afrikaans seem to follow a similar trend to many other smaller languages.
I hear you. I do, however, feel that some things you can't necessarily measure, or maybe you can, but I don't know how. For instance - there are definite benefits to plurality. I find a monolith culture to be boring, in any case. I will note culture, by nature, is kind of just teetering on past tense, since the next generation needs to pick it up and do with it what they want and need. And there I'll concede - the people are not beholden to the culture; it should be the other way around (or at least mostly).
But here's the thing, and maybe I'm being romantic, but I think mother tongue education, especially in South Africa, and especially for Xhosa, Zulu, Afrikaans and Sotho, is so extremely important. Apart from giving opportunities to those who might not otherwise have it, as Langenhoven wrote "soveel tale jy kan, soveel male jy man". But not just that, you write in Afrikaans and English, and you know that translating is not really translation, it really is, in a way, rewriting. Not all words can really, like really, be translated.
But all of this is moot, I think, if there are no opportunities for tertiary studies. I honestly don't understand why there can't be an Afrikaans university in the Western Cape, or a Xhosa one in the Eastern Cape, for instance. At least pre-grad (because of course published research is important).
I do sometimes wonder if I'm not just standing with my finger in a leaking dyke, though.
The question of a university is a different question, I think. Think of it, again, as demand and supply from the student's perspective: why study in Afrikaans when the (international) labour market demands you work in English? Twenty years ago you could perhaps still expect to work only in Afrikaans; that is unlikely today for most professions.
Another thing often overlooked when discussing language at a university: you surely want to be exposed to the best lecturers, professors that specialise in a specific research area. But the more you specialise, the smaller the talent pool. If you require the people you appoint to speak Afrikaans, you won't be able to find people to fill many specialities.
The latter I'll concede. Not convinced on the first point, though. I do think supply (at least in this case; or at least the idea of supply) forces demand somewhat. I suppose we are seeing a real life experiment (for both your points) playing out in Akademia.
However, I don't think anyone really believes they'll only work in x language; but I do think the idea that you have to also study in the language you might work in is pretty overstated. Unless you are working in academia, you'll quickly pick up the relevant jargon et al via osmosis.
Agree that Akademia will be a good experiment, and I hope they do well. There is room for more variety at the tertiary level: a few strong research universities, but many more teaching universities/colleges and training and technical institutions. Research universities, I would argue, need to be English, but there is certainly scope for the rest to include more language diversity.