Talk:breekwater
Latest comment: 3 years ago by Lingo Bingo Dingo in topic Afrikaans etymology
Afrikaans etymology[edit]
@Morgengave I am not convinced that the alternative Afrikaans derivation, inheritance from Dutch, has much to commend it. The Afrikaans word first appears in 1861 [1] in relation to a breakwater project in Cape Town (so its use often resembles a proper noun); [2] the parliamentary discussion would no doubt have taken place in English. While the Dutch word is attested a few years earlier, it was only somewhat common in the late 19th and early 20th century. Supposing a Dutch intermediary, even tentatively as an alternative, seems like carrying coals to Newcastle. There was after all already considerable English influence on Afrikaans at that time. So I think the alternative derivation from Dutch should be removed. ←₰-→ Lingo Bingo Dingo (talk) 14:34, 16 February 2021 (UTC)
- @Lingo Bingo Dingo Yet, usage of the word in Dutch is attested from the 1820s onwards (e.g., [3]) and became common in written Dutch from the 1850s (as a noun) in various contexts (and dozens of books). There's also 1826 attestation of the proper noun for the Plymouth Breakwater [4], one in 1833 for the Delaware Breakwater.[5], and even one (with a capital letter) in 1834 referring to a potential Breekwater in Cape Town.[6] This all precedes the 1861 decision to construct the Breekwater (proper noun) in Table Bay (Cape Town), which renders it possible that Afrikaans inherited the word from Dutch. In addition, the language situation in South Africa was highly diglossic, and even the status of the Cape dialects (versus standard Dutch) was not clear. Recognizing them at that moment as a separate language may be an anachronism. Morgengave (talk) 18:16, 16 February 2021 (UTC)
- @Morgengave That may well be true, but those sparse early Dutch are mostly ad hoc translations of English. Though there was Dutch-Afrikaans diglossia in Afrikaans-speaking parts of what is now South Africa, it clearly formed a separate (but not isolated) community from the Dutch and Belgian communities of Dutch speakers. That breekwater (NL/BE) went to breekwater (SA) seems too implausible to me for inclusion and that it may have been used earlier in Dutch rather than Afrikaans in the Dutch-Afrikaans diglossic situation as a borrowing from SA English seems too trivial to merit mention as a separate step. My view is by the way that the Zamenspraak should definitely be considered as Afrikaans rather than Dutch, despite the orthography.
- So to reiterate the case of direct borrowing from English vs. inheritance from Dutch, in English breakwater had long been an established lexical item whereas in European Dutch it was sparsely attested.
←₰-→Lingo Bingo Dingo (talk) 18:41, 16 February 2021 (UTC)- I suppose it depends on what you call "sparse". I count about 120 attestations from the 19th century on Google Books (admittedly there are some duplicates), and Google Books is not exhaustive, making it at least plausible it was a commonly used word for breakwater (compare btw with "golfbreker" and "zeebreker" which each have about 140 attestations in the 19th century on Google Books, so roughly equally common). There's afaik also no clear, agreed delineation between when the Dutch Cape dialects became the Afrikaans language. Even your 1861 source shows a Dutch with Afrikaans characteristics or a Dutchified Afrikaans. People in the 1860s in any case considered they spoke a variant of Dutch, not a separate language. Btw, I don't say the word "is" inherited from Dutch, just that it's plausible (either from NL+BE Dutch, or from SA Dutch), and that I am not convinced by your case to reasonably rule it out. The conclusion is likely that it's impossible to prove either way. Morgengave (talk) 19:40, 16 February 2021 (UTC)
- @Morgengave What is relevant is that it is sparse before the 1861 Afrikaans attestation; that it becomes more common later in the nineteenth century is not disputed. Afrikaans and Dutch can be pragmatically distinguished based on the morphology and the Zamenspraak uses Afrikaans pronouns; its rather Dutch orthography is meaningless because Afrikaans orthography changes a lot in the late nineteenth century and speakers' attitudes aren't a lodestar either. I'll raise it in the ES later.
←₰-→Lingo Bingo Dingo (talk) 18:56, 6 March 2021 (UTC)
- @Morgengave What is relevant is that it is sparse before the 1861 Afrikaans attestation; that it becomes more common later in the nineteenth century is not disputed. Afrikaans and Dutch can be pragmatically distinguished based on the morphology and the Zamenspraak uses Afrikaans pronouns; its rather Dutch orthography is meaningless because Afrikaans orthography changes a lot in the late nineteenth century and speakers' attitudes aren't a lodestar either. I'll raise it in the ES later.
- I suppose it depends on what you call "sparse". I count about 120 attestations from the 19th century on Google Books (admittedly there are some duplicates), and Google Books is not exhaustive, making it at least plausible it was a commonly used word for breakwater (compare btw with "golfbreker" and "zeebreker" which each have about 140 attestations in the 19th century on Google Books, so roughly equally common). There's afaik also no clear, agreed delineation between when the Dutch Cape dialects became the Afrikaans language. Even your 1861 source shows a Dutch with Afrikaans characteristics or a Dutchified Afrikaans. People in the 1860s in any case considered they spoke a variant of Dutch, not a separate language. Btw, I don't say the word "is" inherited from Dutch, just that it's plausible (either from NL+BE Dutch, or from SA Dutch), and that I am not convinced by your case to reasonably rule it out. The conclusion is likely that it's impossible to prove either way. Morgengave (talk) 19:40, 16 February 2021 (UTC)