Back in the days of colonial South Africa, "Cape Dutch" used to refer collectivelyto the Dutch-based varieties typical of the Cape. The most formalversion of these registers was close, if not similar to European Dutch.Conversely, the least formal versions of these registers had a distincty localcharacter. The nationalist réveil of the late 19th century prompted the definitionof a new language to be called 'Afrikaans', i.e. truly local, truly SouthAfrican, and as such severed as much as possible from its Dutch connexion.Not as radical, the Afrikaans language activists from the period following thesecond Boer War (1899-1902) would rather endeavour to emphasize theAfrikaans linguistic identity within a Dutch context.The codification of Afrikaans has continuously been marked by the -sometimes conflicting - concerns of nurturing 'truly Afrikaans' linguistic features,while cultivating similarities with Dutch for the sake of distantiationfrom English. However, Afrikaans norms have recently tended to open up tolanguage reality for the sake of stylistic and ethnic representativity.
