Afrikaners (including the Boer subgroup) are a Germanic ethnic group in Southern Africa descended from Dutch (including Flemish), French and German settlers whose native tongue is Afrikaans: a Germanic language which derives primarily from 17th century Dutch, and a variety of other languages.
Their ancestors were Dutch Calvinists and French Huguenots, with smaller numbers of Frisians, English,and Germans, and with minor numbers of other European groups (such as Dutch Jews, Scandinavians, Portuguese (mainly Madeirans), Greeks, Italians, Spaniards, Scots, Irish, Polish). During the Apartheid era, race classification was based on appearance and there were many borderline cases.
South Africans of British descent are considered a separate ethnic group from Afrikaners, and their first language is English.
Famous quotes containing the words afrikaner and/or people:
“There is only one element that can break the Afrikaner, and that is the Afrikaner himself. It is when the Afrikaner, like a baboon shot in the stomach, pulls out his own intestines. We must guard against that.”
—P.W. (Pieter Willem)
“If behind the erratic gunfire of the press the author felt that there was another kind of criticism, the opinion of people reading for the love of reading, slowly and unprofessionally, and judging with great sympathy and yet with great severity, might this not improve the quality of his work? And if by our means books were to become stronger, richer, and more varied, that would be an end worth reaching.”
—Virginia Woolf (1882–1941)