In May, 2011 I  visited Stellenbosch to discuss the envisaged Twenty exhibition with Baylon Sandri. I am (painfully) aware of the squabble over Afrikaans as a language of prerogative at Stellenbosch University and I proposed an artwork consisting of one word that makes some sense in both the English and Afrikaans languages, but of which the meanings in the two languages differ significantly. That work was BOOM. I envisaged this work to be a nice big gabeon wall (a thick wall made up of stones stacked in wire baskets) in which two different coloured stones would be so stacked as to spell out the word boom on both sides of the wall. The wall would be placed in Jonkershoek, a get-away nature reserve where romantic couples often enjoy sanctuary in the shadows of large trees and the spellbinding vistas of mountain cliffs. The wall had to be large and inviting enough for the amorous to steal kisses behind. The word boom, in English, is rather onomatopoeic and spells out the noise of exploding bombs, as in the big boom! In Russian boom! is an accepted toast like cheers! – celebration laid on thick! In a more sedate sense, boom is also ‘barrier’, a kind of bar usually pivoted to go up and down to let traffic through. In Afrikaans boom is ‘tree’ a word that would confirm my life-long interest in and respect for nature. I have tried very hard to learn the names of all the plants in the area and I am not doing too badly. Boom, however, has another, far more stress-free meaning in Afrikaans. To the unperturbed it spells out marijuana (Cannabis sativa), also called dagga, pot and hashish. The more easygoing students would immediately chuckle at this usage and might even be tempted to slink behind the boom wall for a whiff or two of the beleagured stuff. I wanted the work to poke some light-hearted fun at the obsessive linguistic preoccupation of the frantic local Afrikaans academic fraternity. It would clearly satisfy them on one level and most certainly raise eyebrows on another. Unfortunately, or is it fortunately, I never got around to make the work and another, already existing work was chosen in its place. There is every reason why, given the logistics can be put in place, I should still make BOOM in Jonkershoek.

 

The idea that one can have words of the same spelling in Afrikaans and English, but that differ totally in meaning, stayed with me, and when I was again approached by Baylon to have a solo exhibition in his SMAC gallery in Stellenbosch 2012, the memory of BOOM milled about in my head and I began to collect similar words. After more than a year I had come up with a list of two-hundred-and-forty words.

 

To stay with the idea of using the earthen substance (stones) envisaged for BOOM, I decided to use the sand/soil from the town of Darling, also in the Western Cape. I mapped out the words on small brick-like plaques and I asked my friend Andrew Munnik to collect the soils and fill in the words and their backgrounds on the plaques. Finally, we would have a brick wall for the linguistically-minded to run into.

 

If you are English and had never spoken a word of Afrikaans, the list of words in PLATTER ROOSTER TASTING will appear totally English to you. You might not guess at the reason for finding these words together in one art work. If you are Afrikaans and had never seen any written English, which is unlikely, you might recognise these words as totally Afrikaans and you might also not know why they are there. A person, bilingual in English and Afrikaans, will easily see that all the words are in the two languages. The two shades of soil of the ‘bricks’ create a situation where the words and their sense tend to emerge softly from the wall and sometimes one has to look twice to read them. The marvel of it all is to see words as from one of the two languages, and then, upon reflection, to find the meaning of that word slowly dawning upon one in the other language.

 

In a way these words are a Dada list – a mini Dada dictionary. Their inclusion is strangely dependent on the throw of a dice, in this case, the dice is the fact that the English and Afrikaans meanings of the words have absolutely nothing to do with each other.

 

At first I thought of calling it LOST IN TRANSLATION because the words play with irreconcilable meanings. This ‘English-only’ title would, however, only serve to anger sensitive members of the Afrikaans community and I decided to call the work PLATTER ROOSTER TASTING. The reason for this is explained in the ‘rules’ I invented in order to develop the work and to help avoid ambiguities as to its purpose.

 

 

Rules for the selection of words in PLATTER ROOSTER TASTING

 

The art work ROOSTER PLATTER TASTING is a small dictionary made up of words of the same spelling in English and Afrikaans but with different meanings. Some entries were omitted if they did not succeed as excellent examples of this kind of difference. Words that might normally be accepted in the game of Scrabble are suitable, but note the following:

No synonyms – elf, for example, is good in the sense of number eleven (Afrikaans), but as Santa’s helper (the same meaning in English/Afrikaans) it is disqualified. The work will be far too large if one had to simply used words of the same spelling and meaning. My friend, Johan van der Wat actually came up with a small sentence that reads true for both languages: “My hand is in warm water.” Unfortunately it is totally synonymous for Afrikaans/English and none such totally similar words are admitted. Other similarly spelled, but unsuitable words, are: hang, arm, hand, bale, was, drank, note, verse, rose, grief, pan, mark (market), vat, ring, stand, sending, spanning, slinger, sing etc. Mars (English – to disfigure, Afrikaans – to march) is disqualified because in both languages Mars is the name of a planet. The artwork ROOSTER PLATTER works with words spelled exactly the same, but that carry no similarities of meaning at all.

 

No informal, colloquial or seldom used words like dink – ‘to think’ (Afrikaans) and a partner in a well-off working couple with no children (informal English); dwang (coercion in Afrikaans and ‘serious trouble’ in colloquial English); vader (‘father’ in Afrikaans and a character from the Star Wars films in English). Also swat, mag, gal, loon, toon. The work is not meant to be the difinitive dictionary of its kind. Exclusion rather than inclusion is preferred. All the words were checked and if they were informal or colloquial, they were dismissed. Some words, like lam, might not seem to carry a meaning in English, but there its is actually a proper verb from the nineteenth century and apparently still in use. It means ‘to hit’: “I'll come over and lam you in the mouth.” Lam is dismissed because hardly anyone still uses it and most English speakers have never heard of it.

 

No scientific words like bots – ‘to crash’ (Afrikaans) and in English the plural of bot, the larva of the botfly.

No foreign or archaic words like tome (‘reins of a horse’ – Afrikaans and ‘book’ – English). Others are: drake, dower, nog, brag, rust.

The grid format of the artwork does not allow for words longer than six letters. So far, no eight- or more letter words have been found, but the following seven-letter words are registered: rooster, slimmer, gladder and platter. Slimmer and gladder are recognised in the slim and glad entries. That leaves platter, rooster and tasting as the ‘champion’ words of the project and to acknowledge their status they were chosen to constitute the name of the artwork: PLATTER ROOSTER TASTING.

No one- or two-letter words are allowed.

No proper names are allowed.

No abbreviations like vet, ‘obese’ in Afrikaans and short for ‘veterinarian’ in English, are allowed. Also: bros (‘brothers’ in English); gat (informal and an abbreviation for ‘gatling’ gun in English),

The word re-use or reuse is sometimes spelled with a hyphen in British English and without one in American English and because of its rarity in the list (the eu-) it is included.

Diacritial marks: reel, to stagger or a film spool (English) is acceptable, but reël, rule in Afrikaans is spelled differently (with a dieresis) and cannot be included

Where meanings are close for some entries, especially of the same word in its plural or in a certain grammatical sense, only the entry with the most letters will be chosen, for example: gun/guns – take only guns; die/dies – take only dies; kale/kales – take only kales; fee/fees – take only fees. The word room is accepted for both languages and is entered. Rooms, a longer word, is acceptable in English, but the Afrikaans Rooms is rejected (a proper name pertaining to the Roman Catholic Church).

 

I am sure that visitors will come up with words that are not on my list. It would be appreciated if they might leave their words with the gallery so that their discoveries can be tested against the ‘rules’ and that a more complete list can be formulated.

 

Willem Boshoff