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Afrikaans

A Ryanair plane parks at the airport in Weeze, Germany

‘It’s absolutely ludicrous’: Traveler up in arms after being forced to take Ryanair’s Afrikaans-language test to fly

Borders

Dinesh Joseph, who is a South African-born leadership and management trainer based in London, was recently on vacation and was one of the people forced to take the test before boarding his flight from the Canary Islands back to the UK. He described the experience to The World’s host Marco Werman.

The World

World Cup Worries

Arts, Culture & Media
Students march at Stellenbosch University earlier this year

A South African university sheds the language of apartheid

Education

In Cape Town, the Ramadan feast is a mix of cultures — just like South Africa itself

Lifestyle & Belief
Children at a township school in Atteridgevile, South Africa. In post-apartheid South Africa, children are no longer required to learn the Afrikaans language.

From Afrikaans to Zulu, South Africa’s languages have stories to tell

Arts, Culture & Media
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COSAT students sing national anthem.

Can you create a national anthem from a mashup? Here’s why South Africa did it

Development & Education

When South Africa ended apartheid and held free elections nearly 20 years ago, it needed a song that would heal the rift created by segregation. Its choice, the country’s new national anthem, is part-hymn, part-march, and all mashup. Instead of rejecting the past, it embraced both parts of it.

New Roles for Old Languages in South Africa

The World in Words

Linguist Mark Turin reports from South Africa, whose post-Apartheid constitution designates eleven languages as official. English is more popular than ever, Afrikaans is re-inventing itself, while the government’s efforts to raise the status of languages like Xhosa and Zulu have succeeded– up to a point.

The World

Afrikaans lit

Arts, Culture & Media

Few authors who write in Afrikaans are read as widely outside South Africa than Marlene Van Niekerk. Van Niekerk explains how moral ambiguities pervade everything about South Africa. From Studio 360.

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