Arthur Goldstuck
The worldwide debate about the dominance of English on the Web will soon reach South Africa as the number of Internet users of other languages reaches critical mass here.
The Computer Economics group, www.computereconomics.com, recently forecast that 57% of Internet users worldwide will speak a language other than English by 2005.
While the number of English speaking Internet users is expected to rise by 60% over the next six years, the number of non- English-speaking users is expected to increase by 150%. Currently 54% of Internet users are English speaking, according to the report.
By 2001, they will account for just 51% of users, falling to 46% in 2003 and 43% by 2005. In contrast, non-English-speaking users currently account for 46% of users. This will increase to 49% by 2001, and to 54% in 2003, reaching 57% by 2005.
Previous research by Jupiter Communications, which pinpointed Germany as Europe’s largest e-commerce market of the future, also concluded that multiple- language sites would be a key corporate strategy of the future. In South Africa, the reality is that far more Afrikaans users are online right now and will be online in the next year or two than, say, Zulu and Xhosa speakers.
In this country, multilingualism will thus initially be encountered as bilingualism in the traditional old South African sense of “English and Afrikaans”. Even in that context, few website owners have woken up to future realities.
Only one major corporate site has adopted a comprehensive strategy of moving beyond English, namely Sanlam, www.sanlam.co.za.
At the same time, several news sites publish bilingually, such as 24.com, www.24.com, which uses its base of Afrikaans newspapers and magazines to extend its reach on an English-dominated Web.
Kalahari.net, www.kalahari.net, faces the same dilemma as an online book and video store that grew out of an Afrikaans publishing house.
These are the exceptions that prove the rule of English dominance, however, and it has been left to enthusiasts and language professionals to get the trend going.
For instance, Die Knoop, www. dieknoop.co.za, is the first serious attempt at a portal of Afrikaans and Afrikaans-related sites and events. Ugly but comprehensive, it includes resources on general topics such as the Internet or the government, which simply happen to be available in the Afrikaans language.
Ironically, but helpfully, it includes a listing of English-language sites that deal with the Afrikaans language.
These include A Beginners’s Guide to Offline Language Materials: Afrikaans, www.geocities.com/Athens/
1615/rhahn/lowlands/afrikaans_offline. htm, and the Yamada Web Guide to Afrikaans, www.babel.uoregon.edu/
yamada/guides/afrikaans.html.
The latter is a kind of Yahoo of languages, which also provides a guide to Afrikaans mailing lists. If it’s informal discussion you’re looking for, the newsgroups of Usenet are your answer and, in particular, the newsgroup news:soc.culture. southafrica.afrikaans.
It’s filled with serious discussion and meaningless fun, as well as a strong dose of highly readable poetry.
Among the fastest-growing Afrikaans language sites on the Web right now is the unlikely www. bybel.co.za, launched quietly in February and already receiving up to a thousand visitors a day.
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