2. Braid Scottis in the Transvaal.
We have had not a little information about the Transvaal from within, but next to nothing about the language of the Boers. And yet there are few more direct roads to the true inwardness of the character and sentiment of a nation than its vernacular. It must be confessed, however, at the outset, that it is a somewhat indirect method of approaching the subject to sit at home here and discuss the speech of the Boer without ever having had an opportunity of hearing a Boer speak. Failing this, I take up my standpoint on a keen interest in Lowland Scots, spoken and written, and with this I propose to compare the Cape Dutch, or Kaapsch, as the Hollander calls it. Towards this aim has been contributed the generous aid of an Afrikander now in Cape Town, and of another who has left the Transvaal after long residence there. Finally, an old and valued friend, the late Heer E. P. Dumas, of Rotterdam, and formerly of Glasgow, lent me of his wonderful resources, both in Dutch and English, and especially sought out for me an admirable guide in "How to Speak Dutch," by Professor W. S. Logeman, B.A., and J. F. Van Oordt, B.A. This excellent manual, published at Amsterdam and Cape Town, second edition, 1899, gives throughout practical conversation in Dutch and Cape Dutch. I have kept almost entirely to the vocables and phrases found in this book.
(a) The Taal.
For a century the Dutch Afrikander has been practically cut off from his ancestral home in Holland. Doubtless his Church, its Bible, and its preachers, have served to keep unbroken a chain of communication, ever lengthening by time and distance, and this kind of influence must have told specially in language. But both the religion and the language have undergone a much more rapid change at home in Holland than out on the sparsely-peopled Veldt of South Africa. The consequence is that both are old-fashioned and homely, and therefore admirably suited to the mental and spiritual attitude of the pastoral Boer. With a creed that has ceased to develop, and without a home-grown literature, he has clung all the more fondly and tenaciously to
