In 1647, the Dutch vessel Haarlem was circumnavigating South Africa’s Cape of Good Hope when it ran aground in Table Bay. Most of the mariners managed to make it to firm land. European ships sailing to the East Indies had generally given the dangerous Cape a wide berth, but fate compelled the shipwrecked Dutch sailors to set up camp for the best part of a year while they waited to be rescued. Their ensuing adventures could rival those of Robinson Crusoe: they built a makeshift camp that they grandly called Fort Zandenburgh (Fort Sandcastle), they lassoed wild cows on the banks of the Salt River, they hunted penguins on an island in the bay—and they began to interact, at first warily and then more energetically, with the local nomadic Nama and Korana people. These people spoke a number of mutually unintelligible Khoisan languages with complex systems of clicking sounds with up to twenty different clicked consonants. Try as the Dutchmen might, they could not pronounce the exotic words. If phrases like “You want tobacco, me want meat” were exchanged (which, according to the diary of one of the stranded Dutchmen, they were), then it had to be in pidgin Dutch, which the Khoisan people readily learned, and not in one of the nineteen indigenous languages spoken on the Cape during that time. Word got back to the Netherlands that the southern tip of Africa was a land of plenty, and within a year, the first Dutch settlers arrived. Some were to bring their wives, some set up homesteads with local women; slaves and indentured servants were brought from other parts of Africa and the East Indies, and within a generation, a new language—Afrikaans—was born. As Hendrik van Reede noted in his diary in 1685 when the Dutch East India Company sent him to inspect the first Cape settlements: “The custom among our people here is to teach the Dutch language to the natives, and these speak it in a very skewed and incomprehensible manner, a manner which we imitate; the children of our Dutch settlers are now speaking this way, laying the foundation for a broken language that in the long run will be impossible to eradicate.”

中文翻译：

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编写不完整/破碎的语言：多种语言、翻译和南非荷兰语的兴起

1647 年，荷兰船只哈勒姆号在绕南非好望角航行时在桌湾搁浅。大多数水手都设法登上了坚固的陆地。航行到东印度群岛的欧洲船只通常给危险的海角一个宽阔的泊位，但命运迫使遇难的荷兰水手在一年中的大部分时间里扎营，等待获救。他们随后的冒险可以与鲁滨逊漂流记的冒险相媲美：他们建造了一个临时营地，他们隆重地称之为桑登堡堡（Fort Sandcastle），他们在盐河岸套住野牛，他们在海湾的一个岛上猎杀企鹅——而且他们开始与当地游牧民族 Nama 和 Korana 互动，起初是谨慎的，然后是更加积极的。这些人讲多种相互无法理解的科伊桑语，具有复杂的咔嗒声系统，带有多达 20 种不同的咔嗒声。尽管荷兰人可能会尝试，但他们无法发音异国情调的词。如果交换诸如“你想要烟草，我想要肉”之类的短语（根据其中一名滞留荷兰人的日记，他们是这样的），那么它必须是皮钦荷兰语，科伊桑人很容易学会，而不是使用当时开普省使用的 19 种土著语言之一。消息传回荷兰，非洲的南端是一片肥沃的土地，一年之内，第一批荷兰定居者抵达。有的带着妻子，有的与当地妇女建立家园；奴隶和契约奴是从非洲和东印度其他地区带来的，在一代人的时间里，一种新的语言——南非荷兰语——诞生了。正如亨德里克·范·里德在 1685 年荷兰东印度公司派他检查开普敦第一批定居点时在他的日记中所指出的那样：“我们这里的人的习惯是向当地人教授荷兰语，而这些人讲荷兰语和难以理解的方式，一种我们模仿的方式；我们荷兰定居者的孩子现在这样说话，为一种长期无法根除的破碎语言奠定了基础。” 我们模仿的方式；我们荷兰定居者的孩子现在这样说话，为一种长期无法根除的破碎语言奠定了基础。” 我们模仿的方式；我们荷兰定居者的孩子现在这样说话，为一种长期无法根除的破碎语言奠定了基础。”