Voortrekkers
Who were the Voortrekkers? Their history, the emergence of their own language, and cultural traces in South Africa and beyond.
South Africa and the Trek Boers
Among the Trek Boers, there were many cultural and linguistic differences. The Trek Boers traveled in wagons and rarely stayed long in one place. Many of them settled in the Eastern Cape, where their descendants became known as the Border Boers and developed a language derived from Dutch.
Language
The language of the Trek Boers arose from a mixture of a Dutch dialect, with numerous words of French, German, Portuguese, Malay, Khoi and later English origin.
A large part of the Trek Boers lived as nomadic farmers until the 20th century, economically quite successfully, while others settled down. Over the course of the 20th century, the term Boers was extended to all Afrikaans-speaking whites, including those whose ancestors had not taken part in the trek to the east, but had remained in the Western Cape in South Africa.
