Kontemporêre

Kontemporêre is an Afrikaans adjective meaning contemporary or belonging to the present era. It is used to describe things that exist or are produced in the present time, especially in art, culture, design, and discourse. Common phrases include kontemporêre kuns (contemporary art) and kontemporêre musiek (contemporary music).

Etymology and form: Kontemporêre is derived from Dutch kontemporair and ultimately from Latin contemporarius, meaning “at the same time.” In Afrikaans, kontemporêre is the attributive form used before a noun, while kontemporêr is the predicative form as in Die kuns is kontemporêr. Spelling variants exist depending on syntactic position and stylistic choices, but kontemporêre kuns is a widely recognized usage.

Usage and nuance: The term emphasizes current or recent phenomena in contrast to historical or archaic terms. It is commonly employed in discussions of the arts, architecture, media, and cultural trends to categorize work and movements that reflect the present moment or a near-present context. While related to modern, kontemporêre often carries a sense of ongoing development and global interconnectedness in today’s cultural landscape.

See also: Contemporary art, Afrikaans language, Dutch loanwords, modernism.