South African English

South African English is a dialect of English spoken in South Africa and in neighbouring countries with a large number of Anglo-Africans living in them, such as Botswana, Namibia, and Zimbabwe.

South African English is not unified in its pronunciation: this can be attributed to the fact that English is the mother tongue for only 40% of the white inhabitants (the remainder mostly having Afrikaans as their mother tongue) and only a tiny minority of black African inhabitants of the region. (In addition some 94% of the 1.1 million inhabitants of Asian descent, and 19% of the 4 million Coloured, or mixed race, inhabitants are English mother tongue speakers.) The dialect can be identified, however, by the multiple loanwords drawn largely from Afrikaans, but increasingly also from Zulu and other indigenous languages. Some of these words, like "trek", have seeped into general English usage throughout the globe.

The dialect was exposed to a humorous treatment by Robin Malan in his book 'Ah Big Yaws' written in the mid-1970s. The book is concise, and conforms more or less to the spoken dialect of Cape Town in 1974–76, in the northern Cape Town suburbs of Bellville and Durbanville, where Malan resided, and in the University town of Stellenbosch, where he was at the time a lecturer of spoken English. This book is often considered a high point of South African written wit, and a low point for South African linguistics, although it is now considered an important cultural time-capsule, as it also gives a pocket outline of white South Africa immediately before the social and political chaos of the 1980s.

The fourth edition of the Dictionary of South African English was released in 1991, and the Oxford Dictionary released its South African English dictionary in 2002.

Pronunciation

South African English spoken by whites bears some resemblances in pronunciation to a mix of Australian English and British English. Afrikaans has heavily influenced only those living in Afrikaans areas.

The most noticeable difference in Afrikaans pronunciation is probably the flat "i". This is a part of the vowel shift that has occurred in South Africa as well as New Zealand. However, the population possessing English as their mother tongue, pronounce words in much the same way as the British upper class.

One difference between British South African English and New Zealand English is in the pronunication of 'ar' and 'ow', as in the pronunciation of the sentence 'park the car downtown'.

New Zealand:
South Africa:

English spoken by Bantu mother-tongue South Africans is sometimes influenced by intonation and pronunciation of Bantu languages.

Vocabulary

There are words that do not exist in British or American English, usually derived from Afrikaans or African languages. Terms in common with American and Australian English include 'freeway' (British English 'motorway'), 'cellphone' (British English: mobile) and 'buck' meaning money (rand, in this case, and not a dollar). South Africans generally refer to the different codes of football, such as soccer and rugby by those names, although some white South Africans may refer to rugby as 'football' as in some parts of Australia as well New Zealand. However, this is not common, and among most South Africans the term 'football' means soccer. There is a great difference between South African English dialects: in Johannesburg the local form is primarily English-based, while its Eastern Cape counterpart is more Afrikaans-based. Although differences between the two are sizeable, there are many similarities.

Some words peculiar to South African English include 'tackies' for sneakers, 'bakkie' for a pick-up truck and 'ballie' for old man.

Idioms

The influence of Afrikaans accounts for many idioms in South African English. Probably the most distinctive example is the use of the Afrikaans word "ja" ("a" as in "father") as a contraction of "yes" as opposed to the word "yeah" used by British, North American and Australian English speakers. (eg: "Do you want to go to a movie?" "Ja, sure")

Other idiomatic phrases influenced or taken from Afrikaans include "are you coming with?" ("are you coming with us?"), "she'll be here just now" instead of "she'll be here soon", "ja well, no fine" instead of "things are okay, so-so", and "hey bru. You know who I am?" instead of "excuse me but what do you think you're doing?". The use of "hey" at the end of a sentence (mainly used in Gauteng province) derives from Cape Dutch eg: "I don't really know, hey". "Must" is sometimes used figuratively to express a desire rather than a literal command, eg: "You must come say hi after the show" would mean "It would be nice to meet after the show".

Speakers of African languages may confuse 'he', 'she' and 'it', as the third person singular in these languages are often the same. "Elizabeth is not here. He is at the shops." and "She's broken, she's not working."

When South Africans say 'How's it?', or 'Howzit?', they mean 'How are you?'. The daily greeting between many English speaking South Africans would be 'Howzit?', followed by 'Not too bad, and you?' meaning 'I'm fine, thanks. And you?'.

Contributions to world English

Several South African words, usually from Afrikaans or native languages of the region, have entered world English: aardvark; apartheid; commando; veld; and trek.

English Academy of Southern Africa

The English Academy of Southern Africa (EASA) is the academy for the English language in the world, but unlike such counterparts as the Académie française, it has no official connection with the government and can only attempt to advise, educate, encourage, and discourage. It was founded in 1961 by Professor Gwen Knowles-Williams of the University of Pretoria in part to defend the role of English against pressure from supporters of Afrikaans. It encourages scholarship in issues surrounding English in Africa through regular conferences, but also remains controversial among language scholars in South Africa for its strong encouragement of International English and British English against emerging Bantu South African pidgin of English due to their poor grammar.

External links

English dialects | English language | Forms of English | Languages of South Africa

Língua inglesa sul-africana | Etelä-Afrikan englanti