KAAPS LANGUAGE GETS ITS OWN DICTIONARY

It’s a language that’s been in existence since the 1500s, but it never had its own dictionary. That is until now.

Kaaps is the language spoken by the locals in the Cape Flats area of South Africa’s Western Cape province. With Afrikaans as its basis, the language also draws influence from English. It’s mostly used by working-class speakers on the Flats.

The Flats came to be when coloured people were forcibly moved to live in that area of Cape Town in the Apartheid years.

IOL reports that Kaaps is used across all online and offline contexts of socialisation, learning, commerce, politics and religion. And, because of language contact and the temporary and seasonal migration of speakers from the Western Cape, it's written and spoken across South Africa and beyond its borders.

The Kaaps trilingual dictionary was launched by the Centre for Multilingual and Diversity Studies at the University of the Western Cape, along with a collection of academic and community stakeholders, reports Eminetra.

The language is often referred to as Afrikaaps with its reference to Afrikaans being evident.

Image credit: The Conversation