Charlize Theron became recently chastised for claiming that her local tongue, Afrikaans, is a disappearing language. The actress became featured at the Smartless podcast, where she mentioned developing up in South Africa with Jason Bateman, Sean Hayes, and Will Arnett. During the interview, she said that she found out to speak English nicely after moving to america on the age of 19. Theron stated that it turned into simple for her to “lose” her South African accent.
She further said that Afrikaans isn’t extensively spoken, with just “approximately 44 people” “nevertheless talking” it:
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“It’s a dying language, and it’s now not a totally useful language.”
As her phrases unfold on-line, Theron become met with harsh condemnation from social media customers. The Pan South African Language Board (PanSALB) also chastised the actress, calling her remarks “disheartening,” “traumatic,” and “erroneous”:
“Ms Theron’s words sell the vast fallacy that Afrikaans is only spoken by way of white ‘boere’ South Africans, which could not be farther from the fact given that 60% of Afrikaans speakers are black.”
“With a market share of roughly 14%, it’s far one in every of South Africa’s maximum widely spoken languages.” Afrikaans is the native language of approximately eight.4 million humans globally.”
According to The Independent, the 2018 Community Survey from Stats South Africa suggests that Afrikaans is the third maximum used language among family individuals, with 12.2% of people inside the nation the usage of it when speaking in their houses.
Twitter responds to Charlize Theron’s Afrikaans statement. Charlize Theron currently observed herself in warm water after claiming that her local tongue, Afrikaans, is a “demise language” spoken by using simply “44 individuals.” In addition to criticizing her, the PanSALB stated that Charlize Theron is appeared in “super appreciate with the aid of the state of her origin” and requested her to make use of her function to emphasise the need of speakme in a single’s mom language in public:
“We implore her to appreciate the Constitutional imperatives that promote social cohesion and to keep the commendable work of the use of her platform to spotlight some of the vital socioeconomic troubles affecting the continent, consisting of the importance of taking part in public existence in a single’s mom tongue.”
I feel honoured to be one of the remaining 44 people in South Africa who still speak Afrikaans! 🇿🇦 🤣 https://t.co/COyu9JiB45 pic.twitter.com/Tw821M0Jgd
— The Kiffness (@TheKiffness) November 17, 2022
Following her statements, the actress drew a swift response, with many turning to Twitter to refute her claims:
Tim Theron, a South African actor-director, remarked on Charlize Theron’s podcast statements on Instagram, writing:
“We are pretty proud of Charlize and all she has executed… But we’re also proud of our range and our terrific and beautiful reliable languages, certainly one of which being Afrikaans.”
He also stated that hundreds of thousands of humans spoke Afrikaans at home:
“It is neither a ‘death language,’ nor is it handiest spoken by using forty four human beings.” Millions of human beings talk it, new songs and poetry are created each day, films are made, and so forth.”
As remarks maintain to glide in, it remains to be seen if Charlize Theron will cope with the difficulty and respond to the outrage in the coming days.