Although the World Cup is still on for another two weeks, we are slowly saying goodbye to South African English here on the blog. This is our final guest blog, from Dawn Nell, a Capetonian and historian. You can follow Dawn on Twitter.

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The description of South Africa as a Rainbow Nation is both a reality and an aspiration. The vibrant noisy multi-ethnic South Africa was not contrived to look photogenic for the World Cup, it is a reality born of centuries of living side by side, an experience often fraught with pain and sometimes filled with joy, but always, ultimately, one that was shared. Nor is the Rainbow Nation a project that has been fully completed. Just twenty years ago, racial discrimination was still legally entrenched in every element of South African society – defining where people could live and work, how they should love, how they should be educated, and where and how they could travel, amongst many other things.

Race mattered in Apartheid South Africa because it was the basis on which so much was defined. As a South African who embraces the idea of the Rainbow Nation I would dearly love to avoid using racial terminology, however, as an historian it is virtually impossible. No narrative of South Africa’s past makes sense without acknowledging the role played by definitions of race. Moreover, some of the terminology historians of South Africa have to work with carries with it odious traces of the cruel prejudices of the past. Words such as Coloured and Bastaard characterize this dilemma. They would – perhaps should – have vanished from the English language if it weren’t for the fact that they encompassed real identities.

Bastaard is a term that I found the most difficult to use as an historian. Meaning ‘bastard’ or ‘illegitimate’ in Afrikaans or Dutch, it described a category of mixed race Dutch-speaking frontier farmers in nineteenth century South Africa. The term Bastaard was clearly designed to lay emphasis on the mixed race origins of this social group. It is also undeniably derogatory. Nonetheless, it is a term by which a sector of South African society in the nineteenth century wanted to be known because it had acquired a social significance and usefulness for the people it described.

Bastaards had much in common with their white farming neighbours on the colonial frontier. Crucially, they participated on more or less equal terms in local militia units known as commandos, and thereby gained a reputation for loyalty to the colony. In rural areas on the frontier, access to land was in the hands of colonial officials who placed considerable weight on the supposed ‘good character’ of applicants. In this context, the associations between colonial loyalty and the term Bastaard were helpful. And when slaves were emancipated in the Cape Colony in 1838, the term Bastaard gained added significance as being a useful way of distinguishing themselves from former slaves.

The term Bastaard died out in the course of the nineteenth century due in part to an erosion in the status of Bastaards in colonial society. Bastaards found that their reputation as loyal subjects meant less and less where there were fewer frontier wars, and where racial classifications became drawn in increasingly broad and stark terms. By the beginning of the twentieth century, Bastaard had become largely subsumed under the term Coloured.

Coloured is a term which has not been in common usage outside South Africa since the 1960s, and its continued use here raises some eyebrows because it is considered by many outside the country to be derogatory. In an interview with BBC Magazine in 2006, Toyin Agbetu of Ligali, an African-British human rights organisation, said the term was wrong “because it strips me of my identity and reduces me to the most superficial physical identifier. It comes from the ideology of racism, that white people are white, and everyone else is somehow other coloured.”

But within South Africa, the term maintains a social and political significance for the approximately nine percent of South Africans – around 4 million people – who describe themselves as Coloured today. People classified as Coloured were treated differently under Apartheid racial legislation from people defined as African or as White ‘European’. Now free of Apartheid-era definitions, Coloured South Africans are at liberty to define themselves in new ways. So it reflects a degree of pride in the identity that so many South Africans still actively choose to describe themselves as Coloured.

I personally may not like the terms Bastaard and Coloured, but as an historian of South Africa, I can recognize that people claiming, as their own, terms that were once insults is part of the way in which they forge a place for themselves in this world. The cumulative effect of generations of South Africans demanding their right to be treated fairly – as Bastaards or Coloureds or anything else – helped create the Rainbow Nation of today.

It wasn’t until I recently researched the fascinating details about the lexicon of South African English that I realized just what a fantastic example it is of the linguistic concept of borrowing. There can’t be many language varieties that have the influence of such a broad range of languages – European, Asian and African, often all in the same sentence!

Fetch up at a barbecue in South Africa and you’ll see what I mean: you could well be eating wors (spicy sausage, from Afrikaans) or a sosatie (kebab, from Javanese) and dopping (drinking, from Dutch) so many beers that you have a babbelas (hangover, from Zulu).

For Kerry’s full article about South African English, check out the June edition of MED Magazine.

The month of South African English is slowly coming to an end. This is the third and final blog from Jean Branford, a world authority on the English of South Africa and author of A Dictionary of South African English.

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In South Africa, too many social and political changes to enumerate have taken place between my teens under British colonial rule, and my late seventies under the spell of the World Cup. Not the least of these is in attitudes to and use of South African words in English. Obviously this has not happened overnight, but most aspects of everyday life have their own distinctively South African vocabulary.

South African names for many things have always been with us: not only the names of our ‘birds, beasts, bushes, bugs and fish’ mentioned before, but many hundreds of others if one’s ears and mind are open to them. Right now we are having an influx of new items exploding with the World Cup, which we are even hearing in the British TV news. I see for example that that thousands of vuvuzelas have been sold at Sainsbury’s in the UK, the diski dance is seen with the makarabas [hard hats with wings], and references to the wakawaka song, the Mother City [Cape Town], and braais [barbecues] have simply moved into place in the language. One Sky News presenter has just recommended ‘a boerewors roll and a bit of biltong’ [a hotdog made with local sausage, and some dried meat] for revellers in search of a bar before the game. Here in SA there has recently been a surge in South Africanness, which currently dominates advertising and TV, much of it featuring exaggerated and not always convincing SA accents.

This ‘Proudly South African’ enthusiasm may turn out to be a flash in the pan, but South African words from many languages have long been part of many aspects of our life. These include names for articles of clothing, such as doek [a headscarf] or velskoen [rough hide shoes]; for vehicles, such as bakkie [a pickup truck], a canopy [a hood to convert it to a covered carrier], a sail [a tarpaulin to cover its load], or a chor or skorokoro [a beat-up old car]; for buildings and furniture, such as stoep [a covered verandah], bankie [a stool], and of course the spens [pantry] and what is in it. Your supermarket till slip could show a pocket [an old measure] of oranges, bringal [aubergine], sosaties [skewered meat kebabs], braaiwors [sausage for the barbecue], beskuit [oven dried rusks], or even a vat of wine [in fact a cardboard ‘box wine’ container]. Indian foods and spices have long been with us, but these names will be familiar to British (as well as Indian) readers. Just as widely known are the names of African foods and drinks such as amasi [thick sour milk], maheu [fermented porridge], mabela meal [ground sorghum] and mmomela [sprouted grain for brewing beer].

One of the earliest ‘South African’ words known to the outside word was boer [Dutch for ‘farmer’]. South Africa has always been a farming country, and the vocabulary reflects this. A plaas [farm] may be simply a tract of land without a homestead, outbuildings, fencing or other ‘improvements’ such as pans [a hollow that fills with water when it rains], dams, or natural fountains [springs], in a place where water is an often overwhelming problem. So the farmer will often have to start from scratch, and he may have to ‘lead water’ through furrows [man-made water courses] to his lands [cultivated fields]. The livestock farmer, who is said to farm with [from Dutch ‘boer met’] cattle, sheep, or goats, may have to camp off his land [fence it off] into grazing camps [paddocks] and even sink a borehole [drill for an underground well]. If the land is too rugged even for grazing it may be written off as baboon rock. And the farmer may well wait long and pray hard for rain.

This is the second of three blogs from Jean Branford, a world authority on the English of South Africa and author of A Dictionary of South African English.

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The usual range of the South African words we use now, as part of our everyday life, pales under the spotlight of the World Cup. The country, having been working up to it for what seems a long time, is now consumed with the fever – and fervour. The old motto ‘Local is Lekker’ [good, excellent] is still around, but ‘Proudly South African’ has bloomed and every flag-adorned packet of supermarket chops bears a label saying so.

Other cries like Ayoba! [We’re proud!] and Laduma! [Thunder!] echo over the air waves, and other African expressions of appreciation like Sharp! Sweet! and Eish! are heard. Loudest are the earsplitting hoots of the vuvuzelas which augment the yelling of match spectators but are already everywhere. Soccer balls flash across the screens – and pavements – and every advertisement from bank accounts to takeaways to motor tyres has a soccer theme. The balls’ black and white hexagonal pattern has even appeared on a kaaskop [‘cheese head’, or shaven] hairdo, and on the surfaces of round buns and cakes! In recent weeks a new word diski dance has come to light, soccer steps and moves to music, actually being taught to children in schools, and performed by all ages on the television news.

For the last few years new African words in English have been proliferating. But many, of course, have been around a long time, such as names of certain animals: tsessebe, kudu, impala, inyala, oribi [antelopes] or of plants like morogo, imifino [wild spinach], intsangu [marijuana], and bangalala [an aphrodisiac].

One of the very earliest African vocabulary items to be used by Europeans is the gracious farewell greeting Hamba Kahle [Go well], first recorded in 1836 and often heard also at the end of a eulogy for the departed – and its reply Sala Kahle [Stay well]. An important concept is that of ubuntu, heard far more often since the long-awaited dismantling of apartheid – this is human-heartedness and compassion embodied in the African familial and social ethos.

There has been an opening up of a new tourism, and ‘the township experience’ [getting insight into African urban life] has gained in popularity. There are also sophisticated city restaurants specializing in African dishes. Parties of tourists are taken to stay at African guest houses and to shebeens [drinking establishments] to sample the equivalent of ‘pub culture’ and to try mqomboti [traditional beer]. They are also introduced to some African foodstuffs, such as putupap [mealie, or maize porridge], mopane worms, samp mngqusho [cooked crushed maize kernels], and even smileys/smilers, halved boiled sheeps’ heads. But they are probably not offered walkie talkies [chickens’ feet and heads].

The media within my experience have embraced the concept of the ‘Rainbow Nation’. There has been some negativity about crime, lawlessness and deprivation – including a community moved out of sight into a Blikkiesdorp [tin can village], but by and large it has been supportive. Overseas chefs are coming to Cape Town to join locals for a ‘World Cup of Food’, and there have even been posthumous showings of Floyd on Africa, one cooking in a noisy shebeen, another in the midst of a circle of inquisitive ostriches who sampled his ingredients, and upset his dishes and work station! And recently one Sky presenter conducted a group of lighties [young lads] in a World Cup between England and South Africa in a school playground, where England won 6–1.

On the whole the anticipation of the World Cup has been a great leveller and unifying force, and had led to a flowering of things African, which it is hoped will not fade away when the vuvuzelas fall silent.

Friday saw the opening of the FIFA World Cup in South Africa. A large proportion of the world’s population will be watching football over the next four weeks. Historian and Capetonian Dawn Nell discusses South African English football/sport terms featuring in the 2010 World Cup.

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The World Cup in South Africa will forever be remembered as the time during which the word vuvuzela came to global consciousness. On the day before the World Cup started vuvuzela was a trending topic on Twitter, apparently the first time a South African word has achieved this contemporary apex of global acclaim (or notoriety).

These plastic trumpet-like instruments are as controversial as they are loud. Many South Africans claim the vuvuzela is a uniquely South African addition to football culture, and the periodic rumours that it is on the verge of being banned by FIFA are met with pious outrage in the South African media. But the vuvuzela is not universally popular in South Africa. Some South Africans question the idea that the vuvuzela is an ‘age-old’ African instrument with deep roots in indigenous culture, and point to its possibly more recent origins in the United States. There are also plenty of South Africans who simply object to the level of noise they create.

But wherever it comes from, and whether you like it or not, the vuvuzela is a feature of South African football, and has just been unleashed on the rest of the world. You can read more about the vuvuzela on the Macmillan Dictionary Buzzword page.

There are some other South African words that you may come across during the World Cup: Bafana Bafana – literally ‘the boys’ in Nguni languages such as IsiXhosa and IsiZulu, and the nickname by which South Africa’s football team is known. Madiba is the affectionate name by which many South Africans refer to former president, Nelson Mandela. And Mzansi, which means ‘south’ in Nguni languages, and is an informal way by which South Africans refer to the country.

I think it would be fair to say that the marketing surrounding the World Cup has played a role in reinforcing the presence of these words in South African English, and in bringing them to the notice of the world.

And sometimes the marketing and media demands of the World Cup have created, rather than merely reflected language in South Africa. Witness for example the way in which the phrase waka waka has attained global renown through Shakira’s Official World Cup Song ‘Waka Waka – Time for Africa’. Yet it’s not a term that had been common in South Africa prior to the World Cup, and many South Africans seem unconvinced that it has any genuine meaning. Being told that it’s Kiswahili for ‘be lighted’ or ‘blaze’ doesn’t help to endear South Africans towards the phrase as Kiswahili is not widely spoken in South Africa and, therefore, there is a sense that using the phrase in the South African context is somewhat contrived.

There are also words that South Africans are surprised not to be seeing more of in relation to the World Cup. An example is the word laduma, which is the word South Africans really expect to hear when a goal is scored in a football match. More specifically, we expect to hear legendary sports commentator, Zama Masondo, excitedly screaming LaduuuUUUUUUma! across the airwaves. Because it’s a term he invented, having been inspired by the drawn-out cries of football commentators he’d heard in Brazil. Although it’s a IsiZulu word, and Masondo originally used it in his Zulu-language commentary of football matches on the radio, it’s a word that’s now a hallmark of all football commentary in South Africa, in whatever language. Laduma also subsequently became the name of a long-running sports programme on South African television, which further helped to entrench it in the South African lexicographic landscape. Long after the World Cup has moved on from South Africa, children across the country will still be celebrating goals with a loud drawn-out LaduuuUUUUUUma! But we’ll have to wait a while to see to whether waka waka becomes a similarly enduring feature of South African English.

Our next guest blog in South African English month is from Professor Tony Voss. Professor Tony Voss was educated in South Africa and the USA and has taught English literature at various universities around the world. He retired his position as head of the English Department of Natal University in 1995. He continues a research interest in Shakespeare, South African literature and Maritime history, and is currently documenting the journeys of the 19th-century South African schooner Mazeppa.

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During Scottish-English week the question was posed, via a tweet: What would Burns’s poetry have been like had he followed through on his plans to emigrate to the West Indies? The question this month is: What if James Joyce, or Samuel Beckett had become a South African? In 1907, Joyce seems at least to have considered emigration to South Africa. In the Cornell University Library is a letter addressed to Joyce from the South African Colonisation Society, signed by the secretary of the education committee:

‘I much regret to inform you that we have no vacancy on our books of the kind you require in South Africa, and I cannot encourage you to hope that there will be any such post available for some time to come’.

How could they turn him down?

Ulysses certainly shows that Joyce was aware of South Africa. In the first few pages Buck Mulligan describes Haines as:

‘the oxy chap downstairs. He’s stinking with money …  His old fellow made his tin selling jalap to Zulus or some bloody swindle or other.’

‘Jalap’ sounds as though it could be a South African word but is a purgative drug and takes its name from Xalapa in Mexico, like jalapeño. ‘Zulus’ is the first in a network of South African references looking back a generation from 1904, to the decade after the Anglo-Zulu War of 1879 and the Eerste Vryheidsoorlog of 1880-1881. Stephen associates Shakespeare with the jingoism of the war of 1899-1902: ‘His pageants, the histories, sail fullbellied on a tide of Mafeking enthusiasm’. Joyce saw that for Imperial Britain ‘The Boers were the beginning of the end. Brummagem England was toppling already and her downfall would be Ireland, her Achilles heel …’

For the course of the war of 1899-1902 Joyce had been a student at University College Dublin. He seems at least to have had socialist sympathies at this stage. Perhaps he read the radical James Connolly’s writings in The Workers’ Republic. On 18th November 1899, Connolly wrote:

‘And what about the war? Well, I think it is the beginning of the end. This great, blustering British Empire; this Empire of truculent bullies, is rushing headlong to its doom.’

These proper nouns ‘Zulus’, ‘Boers’, ‘Mafeking’ have become part of English. The most powerful South African common noun in Ulysses will be very familiar: at one point in the novel Stephen thinks of gypsies:

‘Shouldering their bags they trudged, the red Egyptians … the ruffian and his strolling mort … to Romeville … Across the sands of all the world, followed by the sun’s flaming sword, to the west, trekking to evening lands. She trudges, schlepps, trains, drags, trascines her load. A tide, westering, moondrawn, in her wake. Tides, myriadislanded, within her …’

Here South Africa has trekked into the wordhoard of Ulysses in some form other than a proper noun. ‘Romeville’ evokes both wandering and permanence: the verbs (Afrikaans, Anglo-Saxon, Yiddish, French, Italian) ‘trekking … trudges, schlepps, trains, drags, trascines …’ call up a whole range of culture and history. In ‘trekking to evening lands’ we can hear the novelist Coetzee and in ‘Tides, myriadislanded, within her’ the poet Douglas Livingstone. In 1929 when Joyce was asked to suggest writers for a new literary magazine awareness he recommended some Australians and Afrikaners.

In 1939, on 4 May, some time after the publication of Finnegans Wake, when Joyce felt that his financial situation would make it necessary for him to teach again, he heard from Beckett that a lectureship in Italian was open at the University of Cape Town. Joyce thought it over for a few days, but he had heard that thunderstorms were frequent there, and gave up the idea. Beckett himself did apply for the post.

Note
Richard Ellmann: James Joyce (Oxford University Press, 1982)

Our next guest post about South African English comes from Sarah Clive. Sarah lived in Johannesburg until she was six, then moved over to the UK. She now lives in Wells, Somerset with her two dogs. You can find her here or on her blog.

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Being a bit of a word geek, I subscribe to several ‘word of the day’ emails. You can imagine my joy when my word-love and South African heritage combined, a fortnight or so back, and I found that braaivleis had reached the lofty heights of email ‘word of the day’. For those of you not in the know, braaivleis comes from the Afrikaans for roast meat: braai meaning roast and vleis meaning meat. The braai (or barbecue to the English) is uniquely South African in many respects, and even though I have lived in the UK for over 20 years, is one of those words that can’t be expunged from my vocabulary. It simply creeps back in, earning me slanted sideways glances from my British peers, as if to say ‘why are you using strange foreign words for no reason?’.

It seemed reasonable to think, when we emigrated from South Africa, that moving from one English-speaking country to another would at least mean we didn’t have to worry about the language barrier. How wrong we were. Who could have predicted that a simple trip to the supermarket for some cereal would reduce my Godmother to a gibbering wreck? When we lived back home (in South Africa) cornflakes were known as Kellogg’s. Now, I can’t remember what we called other cereals, but no matter. You can imagine the conversation, and the sense of utter confusion it generated on both sides:

Godmother: Excuse me, I’m looking for the Kellogg’s but I can’t see them.
Sales Assistant: Well, we sell lots of cereals by Kellogg’s, what were you looking for?
Godmother: I’m looking for a box of Kellogg’s, just plain old Kellogg’s.
Sales Assistant: But what Kellogg’s? Rice Crispies, Cornflakes???
Godmother: I’ve told you, just a normal box of Kellogg’s.
(and so it went on …)

We emigrated just as I was starting primary school, and I quickly learned that what I considered English, wasn’t what English kids called English. I didn’t understand felt-tips or trainers, and the English phrases felt as foreign to me as I’m sure I sounded, asking for koki pens and takkies. Just as we use brand terminology in the UK, such as hoovering the carpet, we do also in South Africa, and our koki pens are a localised version of the same phenomenon. That said, wearing trainers took some getting used to. We’d always called them tackies (or takkies) because the sole was slightly tacky (in the sticky sense) and therefore a good option for when you wanted to wear something with a bit of grip or that wasn’t likely to make much noise. I didn’t want to wear them to ‘train’, I wanted to wear them to do things in, like run and cycle and climb trees.

I had, as a child – and still have as an adult – a particular aversion to goggos, which we also called dudus or noogies. Goggos are pronounced with guttural emphasis on the ‘g’ and mean generally any kind of creepy-crawly insect. Growing up in a country where a reasonably large number of insects (and indeed arachnids) are able to cause severe discomfort if not serious illness, it was quite reasonable to give the word as unpleasant a sound as the beasties it represented. I’ve always considered that the English creepy-crawlies lacked something in its daintiness.

Even everyday expressions were different. I’d often begin replies to tricky questions with ag, which sounds a little like the Scottish och. It’s a fantastically useful word, that we don’t have an exact alternative for in English, but is almost an indication that the question has required consideration. Equally, it can stand on its own as the answer to a question. It’s the perfect general-purpose word. Both ja and yebo have liberally peppered my speech over the years. Both mean yes, ja from the Afrikaans and yebo from the Zulu, although yebo can also be used as a way of saying hello.

I have left some of my favorites for last though. Lekker is another fabulously general-purpose word, which can be used to signify approval and delight over any subject matter, from ice-cream to a member of the opposite sex. It’s quite staccato and harsh sounding for an admission of enjoyment or approval, but then that’s perhaps part of its charm. It’s short and definite and gets the point across admirably. Possibly one of the best words in South African English, though, has to be vrot, which is pronounced ‘frot’. To be honest, I didn’t actually realise that this was a South Africanism until I started writing this blog post, but it has remained a faithful friend in describing rotten or putrid food. Despite coming from the Afrikaans originally, it’s now universally accepted as a way of describing something a bit grim. There’s something oddly onomatopoeic and slightly poetic about it to my mind, and I defy anyone to come up with a better replacement.

However, there is one phrase that never seems to have found a home with me in Britain, perhaps on account of the British weather, and it’s a term that describes one of those glorious moments when the weather is doing two things at the same time that seem impossible: when it’s pouring with rain while the sun shines brightly. In South Africa, we call that a monkey’s wedding from the Zulu umshado wezinkawu (= a wedding for monkeys), although there is also a variation in Afrikaans (jakkalstrou), which refers to the meteorological phenomenon as a jackal’s wedding. There seem to be many variations on the name in many different cultures, and they particularly seem to centre around the notion of weddings, although no definitive reasoning for why this may be is known.

In all my linguistic wanderings today, I have forgotten one phrase, which has caused great confusion in my life over the years and is perhaps an appropriate one to end on, and that would be my use of home, for no matter how long I live in Britain, when I talk about back home, I can only ever mean one place. I’ll leave you to work out where that is.

Tot siens!

It is a pleasure and a privilege to welcome Jean Branford to our blog. A distinguished lexicographer, Jean is a world authority on the English of South Africa and author of A Dictionary of South African English. This is the first of two blogs from Dr Branford.

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South African words have been around in English for a long time. In a volume of 1837 Sir James Alexander, a doughty traveller set upon by dogs, reported:

On the cry of ‘voortsuk’ [from the Dutch voort seg ik, be off I say], from the master followed by a stone, they left us.

In his next book of travels, he told of being rudely dismissed ‘by the shrill voice of an old woman, desiring me to ‘loop’ or take myself off’. The early explorers and naturalists knew that the stay-at-homes of Europe were avid for light on the unknown, so-called ‘Dark Continent’, and they obliged with sure sellers, their pages liberally top-dressed with the exotic names of its flora, fauna, peoples, and descriptions of the boers, literally ‘farmers’, the descendants of the colonists established there by the Dutch East India Company in 1652. The naturalists who hoped to, and did, bestow their own names on new species which they identified, did likewise – several well before 1800.

Today we would be unlikely to use Loop [‘Go!’ a command to a team of oxen] to order someone off, but we would certainly use Voetsek for troublesome dogs – because we don’t know another word for the purpose. ‘Shoo!’ comes to mind, but how feeble by comparison! But the names of our birds, beasts, fish and plants do, in great measure remain for the same reason.

A more general entry of South African words into English came with the Anglo-Boer War, of 1899-1902. Soldiers’ letters home and news reports brought ‘… the African veld into the parlours of Brixton and the pubs of Highgate’, as the South African writer Stuart Cloete put it, with such features of the landscape as veld [open country], krans [a steep cliff], nek [a raised ridge connecting mountains], poort [a narrow pass or defile between mountains], kloof [a narrow valley], kop/kopje [a hillock], and many more. Kipling’s war verses too, gave permanency to much of this vocabulary, including: ‘is boerbread and ’is biltong [dried meat] and ’is flask of awful dop [local brandy] – as well as a taste of the place names which clearly fascinated him. His returned Cockney Tommy even refers to ’Ackneystadt [combining Hackney in east London with stadt, city] and Thamesfontein [spring] when he vows to ‘get ’ence an’ trek south’ [journey].

The diaries of the British Settlers of 1820 showed perhaps the first truly ‘South African English’, in that they adopted and adapted words and uses, spelled as they heard them, from their Dutch neighbours. One ‘tracked with my bucks …’ [‘travelled with my goats’ from Dutch trek and bokke]. Another made ‘Tommy Larche’ for his children [tammeletjie, boiled sugar candy]; and one followed the ‘spur’ [spoor, track] of a suspected murderer. Even strange prepositional uses appeared:

… the shooting-match by your place [from Dutch biji, at]
‘… a tiger [tier, tyger, leopard] got under my wethers [sheep] and killed 8 or 9 …’ [from Dutch onder, among].

Even their regular use of ‘place’ may owe something to plaas [farm].

Lastly, not for nothing was Cape Town called the ‘Tavern of the Seas’. As the port of call of mariners from all over the known world, words from many different languages, especially French, German, Portuguese and Malay, made landing here and stayed.

This month’s first guest post about South African English is from Dawn Nell, a historian and Capetonian. You can follow her on twitter.

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There’s a degree of irreverence in South African attitudes to most things, but particularly towards the English. It is something that undoubtedly has its roots in South African history, as pretty much everyone in the country from the Afrikaners to the Zulu has at some time been at war with Britain.  More recently, these antagonisms have been transferred to the sports field where the rivalry is such that you’d find it hard to believe that cricket isn’t ‘a continuation of war by other means’.  And you can see this (gentle) antagonism in a recent joke doing the rounds in South Africa which calls for the country to claim compensation from the British Government for all the Afrikaans words stolen by the English.

What this joke refers to, and what most people have in mind when we talk about South African words that have been absorbed into English, are words such as aardvark, trek, veld, boer, donga, and assegai; words that are a sort of lexicographic snapshot from an historical context of imperial expansion and colonial wars. To be honest, South Africans don’t necessarily hold these words in a great deal of affection and are as likely as people outside South Africa to use them; that is, on the lamentably rare occasions when one finds oneself talking about aardvarks. It’s safe to say that South African English has moved on since the days of boers and assegais.

English is just one of eleven official languages in South Africa; the others are Afrikaans, IsiNdebele, IsiXhosa, IsiZulu, Sepedi, Sesotho, Setswana, SiSwati, Tshivenda, and Xitsonga. And there are many other languages and dialects spoken in the region that aren’t recognized officially, but have nonetheless influenced South African English, including the Khoi, Nama and San languages, Gujarati, Portuguese, ‘Fanagalo’, and Iscamtho or ‘Tsotsi Taal’. The new context in which these languages are interacting is that of a young, democratic, multiracial country in which TV ads and soap operas, tabloid newspapers, the internet, and dance music are some of the major driving forces of cultural exchange. For example, while few white South Africans speak IsiZulu, you’re unlikely to find anyone who doesn’t know that Yebo, Gogo means ‘Yes, Granny’.  This is thanks to a long-running series of cell phone adverts which featured Yebo, Gogo as a catchphrase. A rival cell phone company is responsible for recently popularising the word ayoba meaning ‘cool’, although there is a healthy debate in South Africa as to where this word originates from and what it really means. One argument is that ayoba is associated with the kwaito dance scene in Jozi (that’s Johannesburg). Check out DJ Bobo’s video ‘Ayoba/Shine Forever’ if you’re wondering what I’m talking about.

Another word associated with kwaito that we’re hearing everywhere right now in South Africa is kwaai, which basically means ‘cool’. At a guess, I’d say it’s derived from the Afrikaans for ‘fierce’, but it hardly seems to matter because it just sounds good and you can draw it out to kwaaaaaai depending on how cool something is and how many characters you can spare in your sms (text) message.

Another usefully descriptive word you’ll encounter in South African English is eish, which may or may not have its origins in the IsiXhosa language. More a sound than a word, it’s usually used at the beginning of a sentence to communicate surprise or disbelief. So, someone might for example say, Eish, this music is kwaaai! And recently the meaning of eish has moved on, and it’s also being used to mean ‘brilliant’ or ‘cool’, as in, This music is the eish! I like to think that sort of sums up the South African approach to things, turning something unbelievable into something cool.

It’s South African English month, lekker! When I got back to South Africa in 2002 having been away for 6 years, I was struck by the change in the English spoken there. It had become more of a mix of the other predominant languages (such as Zulu and Afrikaans) and was a real indication, I thought, of the societal changes that had taken place in the post-apartheid ‘Rainbow Nation’, especially amongst the younger generation. Now, 8 years later, it seems to me that South African English has become even more of a mix. We’ve put together this vid to try and show the charismatic diversity that exists there:

Also (more importantly?!), South Africa is hosting the Fifa World Cup 2010 … I’m sure you’ve heard. I can almost hear the vuvuzelas from over here. Ja no, there’s a lot to celebrate hey, we’re totally amped.

As always, we welcome your comments, opinions, and guest posts.