I grew up (for the first few years of my life at any rate) living on the largely Afrikaans-speaking West coast of South Africa. Till I was four or five I spoke only Afrikaans, and while I'd love to be able to say I learned these Afrikaans idioms as a child growing up, the truth is that as I started to learn English, the language of my birth slipped away until my only interaction with it became the odd lesson at school and nothing further. As I've gotten older, I've gained an interest in other languages (mostly Spanish) which has triggered a return to this very first language I learned. My appreciation for Afrikaans has grown with the influence of friends who write poetry in this most descriptive of languages.
So the collection of proverbs and idioms in Afrikaans is a more recent pursuit for me, one perhaps started by a chance encounter with a phrase my late grandmother apparently used often and yet which I only heard from her at around 30 years of age. My mother and I had visited her and in response to some titillating bit of information, this normally super reserved old lady had developed a strange twinkle in her green eyes and declared:
'Nou gaan die poppe dans!'
Translated, this expression literally means 'Now the dolls will dance!' I asked my mother about this later and she informed me that it meant there would be trouble. What a delightfully visual way to express such a sentiment!
Though I've been unable to track down the source of this (and other) Afrikaans sayings, I have come across rather a lot of gems, some of which I would like to share here:
Stille waters, diepe grond - onder draai die duiwel rond
Still water, deep ground, beneath the devil turns around.
I love this one - it is literally a way of saying that someone who appears calm on the surface may in fact harbour a darker side far beneath the exterior!
Another delightful image is found in:
Jakkals trou met wolf se vrou
This is the Afrikaans version of a 'monkey's wedding' - used in referring to sunshine during the rain and translated means:
Jackal is marrying wolf's wife!
And when referring to something very rare, you can say:
So skaars soos ‘n tweedehandse doodskis
As scarce as a secondhand coffin. What's awesome about this is, when taken literally, a word such as coffin (doodskis), translates as 'dead-case.' Did I mention this language was descriptive?
Perhaps one of the most amusing I've recently heard was told to me by my girlfriend, who messaged me in a state of hilarity when she discovered that the Afrikaans expression for a wedgie is:
'n wolmuis vreet die wasgoed
Literally 'a hamster is eating the laundry' :)
I'm glad that with time I've come back to this, my very first language, with its colourful and direct idioms and proverbs. Poetically, the language is gripping and visceral, as I suppose is to be expected from a language rooted in Dutch. It is still not one I speak as regularly as I might, but coming across the little gems that make it so expressive has certainly deepened my interest in the history and development of this unusual language.
This piece was written as part of the Sankofa contest here: https://steemit.com/sankofa/@sankofa/sankofa-contest-an-introduction-and-a-call-to-enter
and though not strictly discussing a particular proverb and its origins in as much beautiful detail as those presented by some of the other entries, I hope this smattering of Afrikaans wisdom at least succeeded in bringing a smile to the faces of those reading it. They certainly did to mine upon learning them :)
Happy Steeming,
The Wise Fox
(All images are from wikimedia commons)