Talk:South African English

Can someone make the last entry, where it says comma, more clear? I don't quite understand what the author intended. Maybe an example would help

I've paraphrased it, is it better now?

Also, please sign your names with four tildes (~~~~). --Menchi 02:06, Aug 18, 2003 (UTC)

Removing "Like continental Europe, the South African English punctuation differs in that commas replace periods in large numbers, such as "12.03 seconds" in North American English becomes "12,03 seconds".". In South African English, spaces are used where in the USA commas are used in large numbers: 1 000 000 vs. 1,000,000. -- Jeandré, 2003-08-19t20:30z

The first part of the sentence is wrong (re: large number). But is the second part wrong (re: 12.03 second -> 12,03 second)? --Menchi 20:29, Aug 19, 2003 (UTC)

Yes, thanks a lot for that rephrasing, its all very clear now Silentelkofyesterday 00:18, 20 Aug 2003 (UTC)silentelkofyesterday

When the comma was introduced to denote the decimal point, the instruction was that it should still be spoken as 'point'. In other words, 3,2 was to be read aloud as three point two. Unfortunately, the broadcasting media ignored this instruction, and the word 'comma' quickly took root. 3 April 2004.

This statement is complete rubbish. " Speakers of African languages may confuse 'he' and 'she', as the third person singular is often the same. "Madam is not here. He is in England." " It does not exist in South African English. Someone had the wool pulled over their eyes.

I live here, and hear it all the time. In Xhosa (and others), there is no gender-specific pronoun, hence the confusion. Greenman 27 Feb 2004

Same here, it definitely does exist. "The boss is not here, she has gone out." is something you hear almost daily. - Dirk 18 July 2004

The only comment I can add is I feel the listed words aren't part of the South African english, unless the speaker has it as a second language. Almost all of the words listed are Afrikaans, and many are afrikaans slang, NOT english. I have lived there for the first twenty years of my life, and I only used braai in general use.

Also, impi is NOT a hoard of warriors. It IS the individual warrior. They are best known as Zulu Impis. Heck, I even did extras work on the film Rhodes, and in one scene we had a few hundred Impis in full gear charging over the hill to our circle of wagons.

Otherwise a good article. I did laugh at the pronounciations bit as it reminded me of how funny we sound (Living in the UK now, so losing my accent bit by bit.)

Strictly speaking, an Impi is a group of warriors. It was the name given to a Zulu fighting unit, typically 1000 warriors strong. Though common, referring to an individual Zulu warrior as an Impi is incorrect, so in compromise some refer to them as "Impi warriors". You can find the correct definition in any dictionary.

I agree with you about the slang, many of the words are not commonly used by English South Africans, and are only used by second-language English-speakers. I think that should be made a bit clearer.

--Impi 12:49, 29 Nov 2004 (UTC)

RtG Asks - I wonder about the word "blou" being listed a meaning "to be tired". Being born and raised in SA with English as a first language but with relatively strong Afrikaans roots, I know "blou" to be the Afrikaans word for "blue" as in the colour blue. I have never heard it being used to describe any sort of fatigue?

Also I am surprised to find no mention of the word "check" used by many English speaking South Africans as a replacement for the word "see" as in "I'll check you later." meaning "I'll see you later." RtG - Dec 2004.

I'm not sure whether to find this article deeply offensive or just funny because how riddled with inaccuracy it is.

For a start you've lumped together English spoken by people for whom it is their first language (and what I would consider South African English) with English as it is spoken by people for whom it is their 2nd, 3rd or even 4th language. To include "Speakers of African languages may confuse 'he', 'she' and 'it', as the third person singular is often the same. "Madam is not here. He is in England." - "Shees braucken, shees not wekking." is, to my mind, racist and just pointless. Some people may make that error, but they probably speak 2 or 3 other languages fluently and it is like pointing out the grammatical errors that speakers of another language make and calling it a dialect is misguided at best and just plain nasty at worst.

You're right that South African English is not unified in its pronunciation, but you fail to mention that English speaking South Africans born in Cape Town, for example, will have a different accent to those born in Johannesburg much like Londoners have a different accent to people from Liverpool in England. In fact English speaking South Africans born in one part of Cape Town can have subtly different accents to those born in a different area of Cape Town. There are many other accents and pronunciations by people who speak any 1 of the other 11 languages just like German people pronounce English words differently to French people: this has nothing to do with the language or dialect itself.

The 'loanwords' listed in vocabularly are all slang and for the most part vulgar slang at that. They do not form part of all South Africans' common parlance much like the way Ali G speaks is not British English. To mix Afrikaans words in with English is to be speaking in a slang and for the most part considered common or least very informal by English speaking South Africans. You won't find one of those words used in a newspaper etc. And as someone else pointed out, 'blou' does not mean tired! Ablution block does not mean an outside toilet in South Africa, it means a building or area in a campsite or similar where there are washbasins, showers etc. Ablution is in the OED and so is block for a building.

As for the English words with different meanings, the overwhelming majority of the words listed fall into one of the following categories: slang / outdated and not used slang / derogatory or vulgar slang / just plain wrong - Adrasteah 23:09, 29 Dec 2004 (UTC)