That’s interesting, I hadn’t thought about it before, but I have understood that ‘duiker’ (a type of antelope?) is pronounced ‘dyka’, not ‘dooka’ and wouldn’t that imply that ‘spruik’ is pronounced as ‘spryke’, not ‘sprook’ as Wordsmith proposes? Or is there a difference here between Dutch and Afrikaans?

I don’t speak Dutch, but I see a lot of it written down and I’m often struck by the ‘ij’ combination that comes out similar to an English ‘y’.