The Afrikaans language movement is one of three efforts that have been organised to promote

Afrikaans Afrikaans (, ) is a West Germanic language that evolved in the Dutch Cape Colony from the Dutch vernacular of Holland proper (i.e., the Hollandic dialect) used by Dutch, French, and German settlers and their enslaved people. Afrikaans gra ...

South Africa South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the southernmost country in Africa. It is bounded to the south by of coastline that stretch along the South Atlantic and Indian Oceans; to the north by the neighbouring countri ...

.Hein Willemse

''theconversation.com'', April 27, 2017.

First language movement

The

language movement began in 1875, with the effort by Stephanus Jacobus du Toit to have Afrikaans recognised as a separate language from Dutch. The first Afrikaans newspaper, '' Die Afrikaanse Patriot'', was first published in 1876.

Second language movement

The second language movement arose after the defeat of the Boers in the

Second Anglo-Boer War The Second Boer War ( af, Tweede Vryheidsoorlog, , 11 October 189931 May 1902), also known as the Boer War, the Anglo–Boer War, or the South African War, was a conflict fought between the British Empire and the two Boer Republics (the South ...

in 1902. Spreading from the Cape Province, it led to the ascendancy of Afrikaans over Dutch and replaced the latter as the medium of instruction in schools, the language of the Dutch Reformed churches and ultimately the co-official language of South Africa in 1925.

Third language movement

After

apartheid Apartheid (, especially South African English: , ; , "aparthood") was a system of institutionalised racial segregation that existed in South Africa and South West Africa (now Namibia) from 1948 to the early 1990s. Apartheid was ...

ended in 1994, the status of Afrikaans in South Africa was much reduced, and went from equal only to English to just one of 11 official languages, which led to a de facto increased dominance of English in the public sphere. Attempts to reverse this relative marginalisation of Afrikaans have been described as the third language movement.

References

{{Use dmy dates, date=April 2017 Language policy in South Africa Afrikaans

First language movement

Second language movement

Third language movement

See also

References