Austrakaans: My Proposal for a Modern Literary Language

Recently on this blog, the brilliant Dr Olivier Simon, inventor of the outstanding constructed language Sambahsa, quipped that he was beginning to think I would create a language based on a mixture of Afrikaans and Indonesian, which he proposed would be the language that I, as an Australian, would be speaking now if Australia had been colonised by the Dutch instead of the English and were therefore still known by the name of New Holland (Nova Hollandia or Nieuw Holland).

This is a typically brilliant idea of Olivier's and I would like to fully credit him for suggesting it. However, I would now like to take the idea further and in a different direction. Read on...

First and foremost, and this is entirely my own idea and therefore no one but myself can be blamed for the etymological deficiencies of my proposed name for the language, I would like to hereby publicly declare my name for a modern literary language which I would like to propose. The name is...

Austrakaans

It is pronounced the way a speaker of Afrikaans would pronounce that word, not the way a speaker of English would pronounce it. If you don't know any Afrikaans, imagine someone with a strong South African accent saying the word, with a somewhat rolled R in the manner of Afrikaans pronunciation.

What a lovely word. Looks great and sounds great. Dripping in history.

I absolutely love this name. In one word it perfectly encapsulates the very nature of the proposed language. It may or may not be etymologically correct but it is just about perfect for marketing purposes, as a hook: here is Australian Afrikaans, here is a language related to Dutch but also distant from it, with strong regional influences. Here is what would have happened if the Dutch had settled what is now called Western Australia in the late 17th century, following on from Abel Tasman's second great Pacific voyage, in 1644.

And this is where I diverge from Olivier's suggestion:

The alternative history which I would like to propose for my linguistic and literary purposes is not only the above but furthermore that the colonial Dutch only settled the western part of Australia. They built, in this hypothetical alternative history, their main colony in the south-west of Australia and also smaller settlements along the north-western coastline. They did not however settle the east coast. Instead, the English settled the east coast of Australia, making their main colony in the south-east. The relationship between Dutch New Holland (western Australia) and English Australia (eastern Australia) was largely peaceful and characterised by vigorous trade. Similarly, there was vigorous trade between New Holland and what is now Indonesia (where today, in the real world, the Dutch influence in Bahasa Indonesia is still very strongly seen).

So what? Who cares? What is different about this idea?

One very, very important thing:

It means that Austrakaans, while being primarily a dialect of Dutch at first, would have absorbed a massive amount of English quite early in its evolution, in addition to absorbing a moderate amount of Malay.

The key point is: early incorporation of a massive amount of English. Now, here's where it gets exciting. Suppose that Austrakaans adopted the same trend as Afrikaans towards simplification of Dutch spelling and grammar and the adoption of almost entirely phonetic spelling. What do you get? Phonetic English! And not just any old phonetic English but a believable and harmonious version thereof. English loan-words, brought into Austrakaans in huge numbers, would have adopted Austrakaans phonetic spelling and pronunciation that while remaining somewhat recognisable to English speakers is based on Afrikaans phonemes. Regular, naturalistic, believable, easy-to-read phonetic spelling. Absolutely perfect for international literary use. Easier than English but with the same access to the massive modern lexicon of English, but entirely regular.

And, by the way, when you hear modern Austrakaans spoken aloud, its English loan-words would sound most definitely "Southern Hemisphere"; think of someone speaking English with a South African accent, mixed with an Australian accent, spiced heavily with Dutch and lightly with southern Asian influences. This would not sound like American English and not quite like European Dutch either. Some colloquial Australian expressions would even exist in Austrakaans.

The resulting language would have been primarily European in nature but with significant Austronesian influence, especially from Malay, and therefore indirect influence from other languages through Malay, including Arabic, Sanskrit, Portuguese, and Chinese. In the same way as real-world Afrikaans has absorbed some words from African languages, Austrakaans would have absorbed some words from Malay. So Austrakaans would sound like primarily like a European language but spiced with Asian influences, whereas real-world Indonesian sounds like primarily an Asian language but spiced with European influences. And just to add that little bit of extra flavour, Austrakaans would have absorbed some aboriginal words from the indigenous peoples of western and northern Australia.

Trade between New Holland, located as it is on the west coast of the continent, and South Africa would have been robust. A very close partnership would have formed between the two countries. Their languages, Austrakaans and Afrikaans would be closely related but separate entities, in much the same way as Afrikaans is closely related to Dutch but still a separate language. Afrikaans has its African influences; Austrakaans would have its English and Asian influences.

Now, bring the clock forward to 2010. New Holland, in the west, is a thriving country with very rich mineral resources, strong agriculture, and famous for medical research and high technology, sharing the continent with its similarly resource-rich sister country, Australia, in the east. New Holland is fiercely proud of its linguistic heritage and its national language, Austrakaans. Australians can largely understand spoken Austrakaans with very little effort, and those Australians who took a couple of years of Austrakaans study as schoolchildren can also easily read its Afrikaans-like phonetic spelling of English words. The continent has become similar to Canada, where English and French co-exist. Here, in the Great Southern Land, English and Austrakaans co-exist. Most New Hollanders are bilingual and both Austrakaans and English are official languages of their country, but there is a marked preference for Austrakaans. The greater ease of reading, writing, and speaking Austrakaans compared to English has made it a very popular second language in southern Asia, especially in Indonesia, where many of its Dutch-origin words are easily recognised.

The bottom line: Austrakaans has become a regional, natural, international auxiliary language which is largely intelligible to English speakers but takes only a fraction of the effort to learn. It is simplified and regular and phonetic.

This is the first really believable scheme I have been able to think up for how it might be possible to gain access to almost the entire lexicon of English but with phonetic spelling that fits the spelling patterns of a real-world native language, in this case Afrikaans. Some very great literary possibilities arise.

And, it has a great back story.

It might even be possible to write a novel in Austrakaans, or a bilingual novel in Austrakaans and English, and have it be comprehensible with only a few weeks of prior study by English speakers in the real world. Say, after doing a short introductory course in Afrikaans, and with an Afrikaans dictionary.

Since we see that very serious international auxiliary languages like Esperanto or Interlingua largely get ignored, but anything to do with a best-selling novel or blockbuster movie gets willingly learned, such as the Na'vi language from the movie Avatar, I am not joking when I propose that introducing a workable auxiliary language through a novel could be the best approach, especially if that novel were made into a spectacular and popular film. But in the case of Austrakaans, the language would be a gateway to easier English.

And what could be more spectacular than a grandiose, sweeping story of the exploration of a new continent, in an alternative history, which makes us think about the relationships between different cultures, as languages and cultures meet and clash, indigenous and colonial, just as in Avatar?

I am parking this idea for now, but I wanted to publicly announce it, especially the name of the language and the historical concept.

I will come back to this and develop it later.

Onward...