Talk:National Party (South Africa)

Later factions

If we can pass family-friendliness, I'd love to do a bit of development on (if I remember the Afrikaans spelling) verligte and verkrampte factions.

For background, my South African experience was in a graduate seminar on strategic research and analysis, back in 1967, when I did my country study on it. At one point, I was very familiar with the military balance; the intelligence community was significantly surprise by a peaceful transition. Howard C. Berkowitz 21:59, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

I say go for it. It's nice to finally find someone else who even knows that the NP had factions (or that there was an NP, for that matter). Shamira Gelbman 22:23, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

OK. Some of this will be from memory and I'll have to see what references I can find. As I remember, there some interesting coalition attempts with the United Party on the one side, and the Broederbund on the other. Howard C. Berkowitz 22:32, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

Spelling question

I've always assumed the language is Afrikaans, so the adjective is double-A as well. Now, I don't actually read it, but just know a number of words. Have I been spelling the language incorrectly as well? Howard C. Berkowitz 21:12, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

Dutch is close enough to Afrikaans that I may butt in. "Afrikaans" (double a) may be an adjective, but also "Afrikaner" (single a). In both languages (Afrikaans and Dutch), the second case has a single a because the syllable is ended by one consonant (a so-called open syllable). [Or do you mean something completely different Howard?]--Paul Wormer 21:37, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, Paul; that's a very good and useful explanation. Howard C. Berkowitz 22:20, 27 March 2009 (UTC)