Taal Monument
The Afrikaanse Taal Monument (“taal” meaning “language”) stands alongside 3 enormous granite rocks known as Paarl, Bretagne and Gordon Rocks. The 3 linked columns symbolize the development of Afrikaans into a language of its own, being created by the people of Africa and the eastern and western worlds. The Dutch teacher Arnoldus Pannevis played an important part in this process. He observed that most of the South Africans who came from Holland could not speak their original mother tongue anymore.Within 200 years, the language of the immigrants from the Netherlands had thoroughly changed through the influence of other European immigrants as well as Hottentots and especially Malays. In 1875, Afrikaans was declared an autonomous language.