A different kind of double: Ingrid and the Tweet
The end of July / beginning of August was a very happy chunk of time for me. The news about the Ingrid Jonker prize reached me on 5 August by the kind (behind the scenes) offices of Rustum — which by now is old news. The previous week, though, I’d heard about a book I’d been closely involved with winning a completely different kind of prize.
On 29 July, late at night, I got an SMS from a colleague of mine: “Just heard from ATKV — WE’VE WON!!” The book was the Oxford Afrikaans-Engels English-Afrikaans Skoolwoordeboek School Dictionary and the prize was the Afrikaans Taal- en Kultuurvereniging’s Woordwysveertjie.
Many people will know about the Veertjies awarded to Deon Meyer (Onsigbaar) and Chris Karsten (Frats), amongst others — the awards are, after all, probably the most prestigious for Afrikaans fiction.
Not many will know about the dictionary prize though — apart from those also working on dictionaries or other reference works, or academically involved.
Our dictionary was published in January 2007, three years after I first proposed it to the Oxford board. Its development caused all kinds of heartache and late nights for the team, led by Dr Phillip Louw, but the end result is something that we are genuinely proud of, and proud to have had acknowledged by the ATKV.
And why the Tweet? The dictionary’s formal title is such a mouthful that it’s affectionately known as the Tweet (an English bowdlerisation of Tweetalige)…
There’s more on the ATKV awards on Litnet, on the local Oxford University Press website and in the Afrikaans print media.
