"Nog iets over het Afrikaansch (Onveranderd)" (Another word on Afrikaans [Unchanged]) by Melius de Villiers c.1920
Nine pages on Afrikaans as a language c.1920.
A phenomenal piece of archival history. It is a surviving printer's manuscript (copy) intended for publication, documenting the fierce, often bitter "Taalstryd" (Language Battle) over the legitimacy of Afrikaans.
The text is titled "Nog iets over het Afrikaansch (Onveranderd)" (Another word on Afrikaans [Unchanged]) and is written in High Dutch. It carries a clear signature across two pages: Melius de Villiers (1849–1938), a towering legal mind who served as the Chief Justice of the Orange Free State Republic from 1889 to 1900.
A Rare Piece of In-House Printing History
In the top-left corner of the front page, note the instruction written in red ink by a newspaper or journal editor:
"Setter! Plaats dit onveranderd door." (Typesetter! Place this through unchanged.)
This proves the document was handled on a printing press room floor. The printer's devil or typesetter would have propped up these exact sheets of paper to manually set the lead type blocks for publication. The circled numbers "2", "8", and "9" likely denote page or section breaks in the typesetter's layout.
The Elitist Backlash Against Afrikaans
While language pioneers like Hoogenhout and Celliers fought to elevate Afrikaans, elite, Dutch-educated intellectuals like Chief Justice Melius de Villiers fiercely resisted it. In this essay, De Villiers delivers a scathing critique of the language.
It this letter he argues that the deviations of Afrikaans from "pure" Dutch ("t-Hollandsch afwijken") were driven by "the least educated part of our population" ("door 't minst beschaafde deel onzer bevolking gebruikt werden"). He views Afrikaans not as an evolving, independent language, but as a corrupted, simplified dialect born out of ignorance.
A Battleground Over the Afrikaans Bible Translation
The crux of De Villiers' argument turns to a massive cultural flashpoint of the late 19th and early 20th centuries: translating the Bible into Afrikaans.
De Villiers targets a brochure advocating for an Afrikaans translation, warning that the proponents are acting too hastily ("overhaastig"). He then quotes a Dutch Reformed (N.G. Kerk) minister who used a highly controversial argument to dismiss the idea.
In a striking display of the deep racial and class prejudices used to gatekeep the language at the time, De Villiers writes:
"...een Bijbel in éenvoudiger taal voor kleurlingen uitgegeven zou worden! Laat men dan voor kleurlingen zulk eene Bijbel overzetting voorbereiden, maar laat ons ons van hen onderscheiden door ons te houden aan de Hollandsche Bijbel..."
(...a Bible in simpler language should be published for Coloured people! Let them prepare such a Bible translation for Coloured people, but let us distinguish ourselves from them by keeping to the Dutch Bible...)
He explicitly argues that an Afrikaans translation is only fit as a "simplified" text for marginalized communities, while the white elite should maintain their status and distinction by adhering to the "sierlijke taal" (elegant language) of the High Dutch Statenbijbel.
The Irony of History
This manuscript captures the exact arguments that the Afrikaanse Taalbeweging had to defeat to achieve standardization. Figures like De Villiers believed that by tying social status to High Dutch, they could halt the rise of Afrikaans.
Instead, the language movement gained unstoppable momentum. De Villiers lived long enough to see his side completely lose the argument: Afrikaans became an official language of South Africa in 1925, and the first complete Afrikaans Bible translation—the very thing he opposes in these pages—was officially published in 1933, five years before his death.
195mm x 260mm - 9 pages.
Some mellowing; minor foxing and thumbing.
R10,000
