Award winning actress Charlize Theron. Picture: Instagram
Award-winning actress Charlize Theron has divided the South African public after her interesting views on her home language Afrikaans.
The Oscar winner’s comments were made on the SmartLess podcast on Spotify earlier this week, with hosts Sean Hayes, Jason Bateman and Will Arnett. She talked about her childhood and how she only started learning English at the age of 19 when she moved to the United States.
Theron said she could barely string a sentence together in English, however, with her pursuit to become an actress – that had to change.
This conversation started with the men asking if she had a South African accent when she was growing up, as the actors agreed doing a South African accent is difficult.
Theron said it was easy for her to drop her South African accent as she was learning the language.
“I think English-speaking South Africans have a harder time [to drop the accent] because it is engrained accent they are trying to break, I didn’t have that.”
When Bateman made a comment that he wasn’t aware that Afrikaans was a distinctive language, Arnett sarcastically added that this was new information for Bateman only, as they were aware that Afrikaans was a language.
Theron said in a matter-of-fact tone: “There are about 44 people still speaking it. It’s definitely a dying language; it’s not a very helpful language”.
The Benoni native would then explain that the language has majority Dutch and some German origins: “We kind of bastardised it, flatten it out a bit”.
Theron in the past has said repeatedly she still speaks Afrikaans to her mother and has been seen visiting South Africa, but she hasn’t lived in the country for over 20 years. She also has been outspoken on political and social issues occurring in the country.
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The comment did take some people off guard, whilst some supported her views.
It’s unclear if the actress was being sarcastic or serious about her comments. However, some agreed that Afrikaans does have tainted history because of Apartheid.