Ernst Oswald Johannes Westphal

Ernst Oswald Johannes Westphal

Ernst Oswald Johannes Gotthard Gotthilf Westphal (1919-1990), was a South African linguist and an expert in Bantu and Khoisan languages.

Ernst Westphal was born at Khalava in Venda, the son of German Lutheran missionary parents. Already as a child he was fluent in German, English, and Afrikaans. His first and native language, however, was Venda, and as a child he was initiated into the partly secret Venda rites for young men. He studied Zulu and Southern Sotho under Clement Martyn Doke at the University of the Witwatersrand and, after graduating in 1942, was a Lecturer there 1942-1947. He was Lecturer in Bantu Languages at the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London 1949-1962, and Professor of African Languages in the School of African studies at the University of Cape Town, South Africa, from 1962 until his retirement in 1984, and recognized as the world's leading authority on the click languages of the San, the Khoisan languages, in many of which he was almost supernaturally fluent. His Portuguese was good enough to allow him to translate texts and inscriptions found in Mozambique from their original language into Portuguese, and he spent time doing this at the request of the Portuguese government, also collaborating with Prof. de Almeida.

His doctoral thesis The Sentence in Venda (University of London, 1955) is said to have been based entirely on his own knowledge of the language, using no other source. According to Rycroft's obituary, Westphal, although originally an expert in the Bantu languages, was fluent in more than a dozen Southern African languages, and he spoke many others well.

Westphal's family has been deeply involved in the cultural life of South Africa for over a hundred years. His grandfather, Gotthilf Ernst Westphal, for example, saw the potential of the teenage Sol Plaatje, then a student at the Mission Station in Pniel, and gave him private tuition. Among other contributions, Plaatje was a founder and first General Secretary of the ANC. Like E.O.J. Westphal, he possessed extraordinary linguistic gifts, and he was a polyglot. Westphal was also one of the founders of SANCCOB (South African National Foundation for the Conservation of Coastal Birds), the story of which is documented in Marie Philip's book "Gregory Jackass Penguin". Westphal is survived by two sons: Robin Peter, b. 1945, and Jonathan Gotthard, b. 1951, a professor of philosophy.

Prof. Westphal is buried in Port Appin, Scotland, near Oban, and his tombstone carries the words, "A True Son of Venda".

A Festschrift was posthumously published in his honour, African linguistic contributions: presented in honour of Ernst Westphal, ed. by Derek F. Gowlett (Pretoria: Via Afrika, 1992).