Etimologiewoordeboek van Afrikaans (EWA)
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The Etimologiewoordeboek van Afrikaans (EWA) was published on Friday 13 June 2003. It is the first Afrikaans etymological dictionary to be published in 36 years.
The EWA contains more than 8 000 entries that were carefully selected to illustrate the rich, multicultural origin of Afrikaans words. The dictionary is a treasury for everyone who wants to know more about the etymology of Afrikaans words. Readers will get a good idea of what happened to Dutch words in South Africa after 1652, and will learn which words Afrikaans acquired independently from Dutch.
The dictionary is readable because different information types are presented clearly and separately. The EWA presents meanings and interesting reasons for naming things, and presents different types of etymological information separately.
The project is the result of an etymological cooperation agreement started in 1995. The idea of the compilation of an etymological dictionary was first mooted by Prof. P.G.J. van Sterkenburg, Director of the Instituut voor Nederlandse Lexicologie (INL). The Editor-in-Chief of the WAT, Dr Dirk van Schalkwyk, realised the pressing need for an Afrikaans etymology dictionary, as the only comparable work --- Afrikaanse Etimologieë by S.P.E. Boshoff and G.S. Nienaber --- was published in 1967. The EWA was compiled with funds from the Netherlands.
Established linguistic experts, namely Prof. Fons Moerdijk, previous Editor-in-Chief of the Woordenboek der Nederlandsche Taal and presently Editor-in-Chief of the Algemeen Nederlands Woordenboek, as well as the well-known Afrikaans language guru, the late Prof. Johan Combrink, were involved in the project, the former to train the editors, and the latter as co-author with Dr Helena Liebenberg.
After the death of Prof. Combrink in July 1999, the editorial team was reassembled in 2001, with Mr Gerhard van Wyk as Technical Editor to edit the manuscript and finalise the text, and with Dr Liebenberg, Prof. Johan Lubbe, Mrs Alet Cloete and Mr Anton Jordaan as authors.
The dictionary has 612 pages and can be ordered for R195.
The EWA in printed and electronic format is sold at the reduced price of R400. This includes the Etimologiewoordeboek van Afrikaans (EWA), the EWA Supplement and EWA on CD.
Click here for the order form.