Fanakalo

Fanakalo (also Fanagalo ) is a lingua franca , comparable to Pidgin English , which was found in the gold, diamond and other mines of South Africa from the end of the 19th century - partly also in the mining areas of Namibia , Zambia , Mozambique , and Zimbabwe of the Congo - as a lingua franca between whites and their workers, but also among indigenous workers. Sometimes it is also used by the whites of South Africa - the Afrikaans- speaking Boers and the English-speaking groups among themselves - not only to communicate, but to emphasize their South African background. Since workers from practically all of South and Central Africa were employed in the South African mines, a lingua franca was particularly necessary in order to be able to communicate with one another at all. These workers then brought the language back to their home regions.

The work in the mining sector broke the traditional connections of the African tribal system. Here many indigenous people came into contact with the environment of modern industry, very large organizational structures and the routine of daily work processes for the first time. This world of work often forced a reorientation in matters of personal health care, hygiene, accommodation and transport. Against this background, the Fanakalo achieved a specifically formative role in the everyday life of workers.

The word Fanakalo is the combination of “equal + it + that” and means the command: “Do it the same way!” With this, the designation already reflects the meaning of the Fanakalo as the language of rule. It comes from the Nguni languages, which are essentially the Bantu languages IsiZulu , IsiXhosa , Siswati and Ndebele .

Unlike pidgin English, however, the main language is not the colonial language, but the indigenous Zulu or the other Nguni languages. English , Afrikaans and Portuguese also have an influence .

The linguist Ralph Adendorff differentiates between the mine fanakalo and the garden fanakalo . The garden fanakalo (or kitchen kaffer ) was the language with the kitchen maids and domestic servants. Kaffer was first the name of the Nguni languages, then the disparaging name for every black person and has therefore long been an offensive swear word. The mine fanakalo, with 70% vocabulary, is more oriented towards the Zulu than the garden fanakalo, which has a stronger tendency towards English.

The attempts in the middle of the 20th century to revive the Fanakalo - similar to Swahili - through standardization as a "basic Bantu" failed, however. Today it is spoken very little and in 1975 it was only a means of communication for a few hundred thousand.

Comparable African languages ​​were Chilapalapa in Zimbabwe (colonial Rhodesia ) , with a large Ndebele vocabulary. The Swahili-based ki-settler is known from Kenya . The prefix “ki” stands for “language” in the Bantu languages, meaning “language of the settlers”.

literature

• Ralph Adendorff: Fanakalo - a pidgin in South Africa. In: Rajend Mesthrie (Ed.): Language in South Africa. Cambridge University Press. Cambridge et al. 2002, ISBN 0-521-79105-7 , pp. 179-198, online at www.books.google.de

Individual evidence

1. ^ D. Hobart Houghton: The South African Economy. Oxford University Press, Cape Town et al. 1964, p. 109.