Overleg:Afrikaans

'met name de afstammelingen van de blanke kolonisten' ??? Dit is ronduit racistisch wanneer het over een taal gaat waarvan meer dan de helft van de sprekers van minstens gemengde zo niet grotendeels Afrikaanse afkomst is. Jcwf 22 jun 2005 14:19 (UTC)

De opmerking gaat over afstammelingen, wanneer er sprake is van een gemengd ras dan is dat absoluut niet in tegenspraak met het feit dat ze afstammen van blanke Nederlandstalige kolonisten. GerardM 22 jun 2005 15:26 (UTC)

En diegenen die daar niet van afstammen, maar bijvoorbeeld iemand van gemengd San, Maleise en Sotho afkomst? Of de 70000 of zo moedertaalsprekers die vrijwel puur zwart zijn? En de miljoenen tweedetaal-sprekers? Tellen die nog steeds niet mee? Er zijn zat mensen die geen drup 'blank' bloed hebben die de taal spreken. Een Damara en een Sotho kunnen best Afrikaans met elkaar gaan zitten praten (Heb het meegemaakt). Hetzelfde geldt voor Nederlandstaligen in (of uit) Suriname. Moeten die nog steeds leren dat hun Batavierse voorouders van de Rijn afgezakt zijn? Alsjeblieft zeg... Taal heeft (gelukkig) weinig met afstamming te maken. Jcwf

Waardeloze definitie: volgens de laatste volkstelling was meer dan de helft van de Afrikaanstaligen kleurling en minder dan de helft blank, met daarnaast kleinere groepen zwarte en Aziatische Afrikaanstaligen. De huidige definitie is dus onjuist, je zou even goed kunnen zeggen: 'met name afstammelingen van de inheemse bevolking'. Maar eigenlijk vind ik net als Jcwf, dat ras hier totaal niet ter zake doet. Dit is een woordenboek van vandaag, niet een uit de apartheidstijd. Dimitri 28 jul 2005 15:09 (UTC)

Engels: Eigennaam or Zelfstandig naamwoord?

Hi On the english wiktionary about the english word Afrikaans it says "proper noun" (Eigennaam) but this article says Zelfstandig naamwoord (noun). Is it a mistake in this article? Kinamand 9 jun 2008 12:10 (CEST)

• Hello, this is a mistake at the English Wiktionary, because the language "Afrikaans" is a noun, also in English. This is because you can say: the Afrikaans in English, or in Dutch: het Afrikaans. This makes it a noun. I hope you have enough information now. Kind regards, Tvdm 9 jun 2008 16:26 (CEST)

But try to read this [1]. The word Afrikaans in English is with capital letter so it must be a proper noun! Kinamand 9 jun 2008 17:51 (CEST)

Note that on the english wiktionary all language names are descripted as proper noun so it is not a simple mistake. Kinamand 9 jun 2008 17:54 (CEST)

Yes, I get your point. Well, that might be at the English Wiktionary, in Dutch we don't handle that rule. We only call a word a proper noun (eigennaam) if the word is a (geographic) name, like Amsterdam or Kate. The word "Afrikaans" is really a normal noun, but the word "Africa" is a proper noun, because it's a geographic name. Tvdm 9 jun 2008 19:15 (CEST)

I agree Tim. In the preamble of the 'Green Book' there is mention of Eigennamen (persons, buildings, companies etc) separately from language names, though both are capitalised. So in general languages are treated as a special kind of nouns that do get capitalized but they are not proper names. This may well differ from grammar to grammar, i.e. from language to language. I'd be interested to know how Danish grammars deal with that. Of course this kind of raises the question how wiktionary should deal with issues like that. My humble POV is that da.wikti should follow Danish custom and we should follow ours. That also goes for a number of other things. The en.wikti is now using a lot of 'determiners' for what we would call pronouns, particularly if they are adjectival in nature. Dutch 'naamwoorden' (and 'voornaamwoorden') have always had both substantival and adjectival members (as the old Latin grammar had: nomen substantivum and nomen adjectivum etc.) In English grammar they have divided things up differently, in fact the word 'noun' only refers to substantive ones (in contrast to the Latin nomen or the Dutch naamwoord). I think we should stick to Dutch usage here (which is why we have categories like categorie:Naamwoord for which there is no English equivalent.

Jcwf 9 jun 2008 19:36 (CEST)

Is the green book about the english language? In Danish we capitalize proper nouns but words like Danish (dansk) is not proper noun in Danish and therefore not capitalized in Danish. But different languages can have differet word classes. en.wiktionary must know english grammer well I will suppose. Kinamand 9 jun 2008 21:21 (CEST)

Ah, that is another complication. I see your problem now. No, we do not apply English grammatical terms to English words and Danish to Danish here. We use (equivalent) Dutch grammatical terms for all words and that means they could get classified a bit differently. In some ways we have no choice: I do not know an equivalent for 'determiner' in Dutch... So we treat the words 'Danish', 'Deens' and 'dansk' all as nouns not as proper names. Of course that may give some problems, e.g. with the tenses of a language like French. We haven't really dealt with that, but I think we should adapt them more to Dutch usage rather than have 'passé simple' or so.

Jcwf 9 jun 2008 22:15 (CEST)

Just to make sure you understand my point: Say that we have two languages A and B and in language A we have the word x which can be translated to y in language B. I will say that x and y can have different grammatical terms even though they have same meaning. If I understand you right you will say that x and y must always have same grammatical term. I dont agree with you argument that you dont have a choice about 'determiner' because you can not translate the grammatical term to Dutch. If English grammer is so that it has the grammatical class 'determiner' I think we have to try to find a good translation for that term on the other wiktionaries. Kinamand 10 jun 2008 09:54 (CEST)

I think it is good to remember that there is nothing 'natural' or 'God-given' about a grammar. Grammars are inventions by people who are trying to describe the structure of a language, usually their own. It is a model in the scientific sense of that word. Some models are better than others but many of them are about equally (in)appropriate. In certain countries certain models are more prevalent than others. This also predetermines the available terms in a language. We have little choice here but to use the terms that Dutch has developed over the centuries. Yes I could translate noun by substantief, because naamwoord has no translation in English, but why on earth should I? Is English God's language? The measure of all things? What is wrong with using the Dutch system on a Dutch site? Are the Anglophones going to try and translate naamwoord because we use it? Bloody unlikely! I tried to convince them to adopt the term pronominal adverb. It was made into a 'non-standard header' and eliminated. Even though English has them too...

Jcwf 10 jun 2008 15:14 (CEST)

Sound like you are angry at me but I dont say anything about English being God's language so I think that you misunderstand me. I only suggest that when making an article about an English word we use english grammer to describe it and when making article about an Dutch word we use dutch grammer to describe it. I think it must be possible to translate naamwoord to something in English but that must be for people on the English wiktionary making articles about Dutch to figure out how to translate best. But another thing is that I feel it is wrong that grammatical term are in the header. They should be placed in a section about inflection. Good reason for that is the Danish word øre where gender depends on meaning of word and Danish word lade where inflection depends on meaning of word. Grammatical term are been given to much attention on the wiktionary's because they are in the headlines. Instead in my opinion the different meanings of a word should be first (right under the language name). Kinamand 10 jun 2008 15:50 (CEST)