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Arabic Afrikaans

Arabic Afrikaans (Afrikaans: Arabies Afrikaans, Arabic Afrikaans: عربس افركانس) or Lisan-e-Afrikaans (لسانِ افرکانس) was a form of Afrikaans written in the Arabic script. It began in the 1830s in the madrasa in Cape Town. Beside a 16th-century manuscript in the German language written with Arabic script,[1] it is the only Germanic language known to have been written in the Arabic script.[2]

Letters

Overview

The Arabic Afrikaans (Afrikaans: alifbe) is a variant of the Arabic alphabet used to write Afrikaans. It consists of 36 letters:

Note: This alphabet is the Persian form of the Arabic alphabet, with 36 letters, including extra letters for sounds that are not in the Arabic alphabet.

Vowels

Phonology

Consonants

Texts

Arabisi-Afrikaans 1872

Seventy-four Arabic Afrikaans texts are extant. The earliest, the "Hidyat al-Islam", is dated 1845, though its source manuscript no longer exists. The oldest surviving manuscript, which describes the basic Islamic learning, was written by the imam Abdul-Kahhar ibn Abdul-Malik in 1868. The most professional version was written in 1869 by Abu Bakr Effendi, who came from Istanbul to the Cape in 1862.

Uiteensetting van die Godsdiens

One of the best examples of this literature was Uiteensetting van die Godsdiens ("Exposition of the Religion"), a book laying out Islamic traditions according to the Hanafi religious law. Written by Abu Bakr Effendi, it was printed using Arabic script throughout, but contained transcriptions of Afrikaans.

According to one of the three experts in this field, the German Hans Kähler [de], about 20 people were responsible for the text, but the most important contributors to Arabic Afrikaans opinion were:

This is a paragraph of the book Uiteensetting van die godsdiens:

The Arabic-alphabet version uses an Arabic word in several places where modern Afrikaans uses a Germanic word, e.g. dunya دنيا for wêreld, meaning "world". The Arabic words are entirely unknown in Afrikaans.

Without the above Translation into modern standard Afrikaans (which is in itself not standard Afrikaans although much closer to it), it is nearly impossible for an Afrikaans-speaking person to understand the above Transcription of the Arabic-alphabet text. Some words do however appear to resemble phonetic transliterations between Arabic script and the version of Afrikaans spoken by Cape Coloured people, mixed with Dutch.

Islam arrived among the Malays during the early 15th century and these works were most likely teaching tools; a way for Muslim teachers to instruct Malay slaves in the Cape while not necessarily being able to speak Dutch very well or at all.

Qur'an

An example that used Arabic vowels was a handwritten Arabic–Afrikaans bilingual Quran (perhaps written in the 1880s). In it, for example, Surah 67, Ayah 1 says:[3]

(° = vowel sign missing, ň = /ŋ/ as in "king", ʿ = ayn, underlined = in Arabic.)

Here in the Afrikaans text:

Lexicon

Numerals

Arabic Afrikaans used Eastern Arabic numerals.[dubious – discuss] The following is the list of basic cardinal numerals with the spelling in the Afrikaans Latin alphabet:

See also

References

  1. ^ compare the Lutheran hymn Vater unser im Himmelreich in the following picture. [Martin Luther]: Alaman Türkīsi. In: [Anon.]: Meǧmūʿa. [o.O.u.J.] fol. 40r.-41v. http://data.onb.ac.at/rec/AL00642162 also the digitalization of the full picture http://data.onb.ac.at/dtl/3373545 (accessed 2019-01-15).
  2. ^ "List of issues Southern African Linguistics and Applied Language Studies". www.tandfonline.com.
  3. ^ Michael Cook, The Koran, A Very Short Introduction, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000, ISBN 0-19-285344-9, p. 93
  4. ^ "Arabic Afrikaans – early standardisation of Afrikaans orthography: A discussion of The Afrikaans of the Cape Muslims by Achmat Davids".

External links