come now to the topic of language, which will be found relevant,
showing Hollander and Bond influence in using that also as a hostile
weapon. What the Boers still speak is a vernacular or dialect so far
removed from High Dutch as to be unintelligible to the uninitiated
Hollander. It took its form from the dialects brought to the Cape of
Good Hope by unlettered Dutch colonists and a large admixture of locally
produced idioms, with a slight trace of the structure of the French
language in expressing negations. In the two Republics High Dutch rules
for official purposes, but in common intercourse the vernacular Dutch is
still about the same as it had been a hundred years ago. For an
English-Dutch interpreter the thorough knowledge of the vernacular is
essential. Preachers and teachers have to adapt their speech by
combining High Dutch with the dialect, the one or the other
predominating according to the capacity of the hearers. Hollanders
follow the same method when learning the vernacular Dutch.

In towns and villages, not only in the Colonies, but also in both
Republics, English is almost exclusively used. The Boers, and especially
the younger generation, have a much greater aptitude and penchant for
learning English than for High Dutch; and generally it has been held
more important by the parents that their children should become
proficient in English, that language being more easily acquired and of
vastly greater use than Dutch. The latter, it was truly averred, would
be learnt as they grew up quite sufficiently for all purposes.

The feeling thus existed some twenty years ago that English would become
general, and ultimately oust both Dutch and the vernacular. Numerous
Boer patriots then devised the remedy of preserving the vernacular by
raising it to the standard of a written and printed language for
official as well as common use. The Rev. du Toit, later appointed
Minister (or Superintendent) of Education in the Transvaal, worked
tenaciously towards making that movement a national success. He had the
co-operation of many other educated patriots likewise. The _Paarl
Patriot_, a journal published in the vernacular, is one of the
surviving efforts. Vocabularies, school books, etc., etc., were printed
in that dialect, and the translation of the Bible had also been brought
to an advanced stage, when the project had to be abandoned, principally
through Hollander influence, aided by some of the Republican leaders and
Bond