Bien loin que l'objet précède le point de vue, on dirait que c'est le point de vue qui crée l'objet (Ferdinand de Saussure 1916:23).

Traditionally, historiographers of Afrikaans have argued that a relatively uniform (spoken) vernacular existed at the Cape from the late eighteenth century, where it constituted the L(ow) variety in a diglossic situation (see Raidt 1991). Standardization of Afrikaans has been described accordingly in a “naturalistic” fashion as the codification and elaboration of this preexistent vernacular. This paper summarizes the results of a variationist study of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century documents that shows the traditional view to be seriously flawed. While “Cape Dutch Vernacular” (or “Afrikaans,” as it came to be called) was a well-defined entity in the popular consciousness from the mid-nineteenth century, the actual patterns of language use in the historical texts indicate the existence of a complex social dialect continuum until the early twentieth century. Variation patterns described for the late eighteenth century are shown still to be productive around 1900. Linguistic standardization, understood as the reduction of variation and the emergence of a linguistic norm, was rapid and strongly marked by cultural and political nationalism.* I should like to thank Roger Lass and Paul Roberge for many stimulating discussions about Afrikaans historical linguistics and for their comments on earlier versions of the work presented in this article. The responsibility for any mistakes remains of course my own.