The Genootskap van Regte Afrikaners (

Afrikaans Afrikaans is a West Germanic languages, West Germanic language spoken in South Africa, Namibia and to a lesser extent Botswana, Zambia, Zimbabwe and also Argentina where there is a group in Sarmiento, Chubut, Sarmiento that speaks the Pat ...

for "Society of True Afrikaners") was formed on 14 August 1875 in the town of

Paarl Paarl (; ; derived from ''parel'', meaning "pearl" in Dutch) is a city with 294,457 inhabitants in the Western Cape province of South Africa. It is the largest city in the Boland, Western Cape, Cape Winelands. Due to the growth of the Mbekweni ...

by a group of

speakers from the current

Western Cape The Western Cape ( ; , ) is a provinces of South Africa, province of South Africa, situated on the south-western coast of the country. It is the List of South African provinces by area, fourth largest of the nine provinces with an area of , an ...

region. From 15 January 1876 the society published a journal in Afrikaans called '' Die Afrikaanse Patriot'' ("The Afrikaans Patriot") as well as a number of books, including grammars, dictionaries, religious material and histories. ''Die Afrikaanse Patriot'' was succeeded in 1905 by today's Paarl newspaper. Arnoldus Pannevis, a teacher, is generally considered to be the spiritual father of the society. He had observed that most of the South Africans from Dutch descent could not speak the "pure" form of their original mother tongue anymore. In the course of its (then) 200-year-old history, the language of the immigrants from the

Netherlands , Terminology of the Low Countries, informally Holland, is a country in Northwestern Europe, with Caribbean Netherlands, overseas territories in the Caribbean. It is the largest of the four constituent countries of the Kingdom of the Nether ...

had been thoroughly changed by the influence of other

Europe Europe is a continent located entirely in the Northern Hemisphere and mostly in the Eastern Hemisphere. It is bordered by the Arctic Ocean to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the west, the Mediterranean Sea to the south, and Asia to the east ...

an immigrants, indigenous tribes such as the

Khoikhoi Khoikhoi (Help:IPA/English, /ˈkɔɪkɔɪ/ Help:Pronunciation respelling key, ''KOY-koy'') (or Khoekhoe in Namibian orthography) are the traditionally Nomad, nomadic pastoralist Indigenous peoples, indigenous population of South Africa. They ...

, and especially the

Cape Malays Cape Malays (, in Arabic script) also known as Cape Muslims or Malays, are a Muslim community or ethnic group in South Africa. They are the descendants of enslaved and free Muslims from different parts of the world, specifically Indonesia (a ...

. In 1874 Pannevis expressed these views in the journal '' de Zuid-Afrikaan'' under the title "''Is die Afferkaans wesenlijk een taal?''" The eight founding members were Gideon Malherbe, the Dutch immigrant CP Hoogenhout, DF du Toit^AF (nicknamed ''Dokter'', i.e. "Doctor"), a journalist coincidentally named Daniel Francois du Toit^AF (nicknamed ''Oom Lokomotief'', i.e. "Uncle Locomotive"), his brother Rev SJ du Toit, August Ahrbeck, Petrus Malherbe and SG du Toit. Everybody except Hoogenhout and Ahrbeck were related. Many of them were of

Huguenot The Huguenots ( , ; ) are a Religious denomination, religious group of French people, French Protestants who held to the Reformed (Calvinist) tradition of Protestantism. The term, which may be derived from the name of a Swiss political leader, ...

descent. On 14 August 1975 the ''Afrikaans Language Museum'' was opened in the former house of Gideon Malherbe in Paarl, the building in which the Society was founded. The

Afrikaans Language Monument The Afrikaans Language Monument () is located on a hill overlooking Paarl, Western Cape Province, South Africa. Officially opened on 10 October 1975, it commemorates the semicentenary of Afrikaans being declared an official language of South A ...

was also opened in Paarl in 1975, commemorating the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Society.

References

External links

Afrikaans Museum and Monument
1875 establishments in South Africa Afrikaans Afrikaner organizations Afrikaans words and phrases Organizations established in 1875 {{SouthAfrica-org-stub