# Die etimologie en verstaan van rampe deur die lens van Afrikaans as moedertaal

## TL;DR

This paper explores how Afrikaans, as a mother tongue, influences the understanding and terminology of disasters.

## Contribution

The study provides new insights into Afrikaans disaster terminology and its conceptual implications.

## Key findings

- Afrikaans speakers differentiate between 'disaster', 'crisis', and 'catastrophe' but maintain consistent core meanings.
- The terminology reflects a humanitarian perspective rather than a focus on disaster risk reduction.
- Afrikaans plays a key role in shaping disaster understanding and management practices.

## Abstract

The etymology and understanding of disasters through the lens of Afrikaans as a mother tongue. The historical development of Afrikaans had a modest yet complex beginning. Over time, Afrikaans has evolved into a fully developed scientific language in various contexts, including in disaster studies. To enhance our understanding of disasters and the natural environment, several disaster-related terms have emerged in Afrikaans, namely ‘disaster’, ‘crisis’, and ‘catastrophe’. This study therefore aimed to conduct an in-depth analysis of the unique disaster-related terminology used in Afrikaans and to explore what this terminology reveals about Afrikaans speakers’ conceptualisation of disasters. A qualitative research approach was followed, employing in-depth Corpus and N-gram analyses of various disaster-related Afrikaans terms. The findings indicate that while Afrikaans speakers differentiate in their use of the terms ‘disaster’, ‘crisis’, and ‘catastrophe’, the core meanings of these terms remain consistent. Although the analyses revealed no explicit focus on disaster risk reduction, it did show that a humanitarian component underpins these terms. This suggests that their usage aligns with their function within the scientific language.

Afrikaans, as a mother tongue, thus plays a fundamental role in shaping the etymology and understanding of disasters, as well as in advancing sustainable disaster risk reduction and disaster management practices.