WORDS, WORDS, WORDS!

My father was trilingual, his parents were German-speaking but he grew up in the Republic of the Orange Free State and all his school mates were Afrikaans and he said that all the brothers spoke Afrikaans to each other and, as he had an affinity for langauges, later in life he was fluent in English as well. Of course he became a school teacher and eventually became principal af a school in the Southern Free State. He used to buy just about every new Afrikaans book published and could never say no an offer to buy a dictionary, I think we had about seven dictionaries in the house! He used to love a play upon words and a pun!




And the he suddenly resigned as principal of the school, took a post in a school in another town and at the end of the year he took early retirement, I have never been able to find out exactly why. He the tried his hand at farming and rented a farm near Kroonstad, but his idea of farming was to sit on the stoep with a good book and now and then giving instructions to Koki Mokeki. Needless to say, his farming was unsuccessful and he then joined the Regional Office of Water Affairs in Kroonstad.



The whole of the above is just background to what I want to write about, namely their typist in the office, an elderly lady with very little typing ability as she continually tore the paper out of the typewriter because she had made too many mistakes. One day my father said to her: "Miss Turner. I wish you would one day type a letter to the Director of Irrigation, but type Irritation by mistake." She replied: "O no, mr Grosskopf, I will lose my job if I make a mistake like that!" to which my father replied: "Miss Turner, all humans make mistakes, the man who does not make mistakes has still to be born, and then he will be stillborn!"

Oupa