Introduction to South African English
The idea that the variety of English spoken in South Africa is worthy of serious scholarly study may seem puzzling for some, perhaps as many of the words used by the average South African seem similar to standard international English. However, books of all kinds, newspapers, magazines, advertisements and the internet provide evidence of English words or senses that are particular to the South African variety of the language and which at times can be perplexing to English-speaker elsewhere. These are recorded by linguists and dictionary-compilers and, if they stand the test of time, are published in dictionaries such as the Dictionary of South African English on Historical Principles.
Perhaps it's worth remembering that the English we speak in South Africa is not just distinguished by those hardy perennials that appear on popular South African websites. Sure, you'll find kif and larney as well as braai and boerie – but there's a whole range of other vocabulary that derives from the many specific areas in South African culture that differ from those in other English speaking countries. So, for example, our farmers dig dams for holding water, and keep their animals in camps; our lawyers – attorneys and advocates, rather than solicitors and barristers – advise us to sign an ANC, before we marry, unless we want to be wed in community of property; our social realities are reflected in our informal settlements and townships, where people may use zinc to roof their home in shackland. And those are just a few of the 'ordinary' South African English words that pepper our everyday lives.
English has, over a long period, absorbed vocaulary from other languages, with the South African version including a fair share of words 'borrowed' from our indigenous languages. From the early years of British contact there are Khoisan words for vegetation, like the tsamma wild melon, or animals such as the gnu, that odd-looking antelope that Dutch settlers named the wildebeest. Similarly, there are many South African English words for social customs and cultural events for which there was no English equivalent. Still today, before a marriage is agreed to, the prospective groom may pay lobola to his bride-to-be's family, and in our day-to-day affairs we attend bosberaads, indabas and lekgotlas. Borrowed words may have appeared at first difficult to pronounce or write but allowed a common point of reference between a wider diversity of people. British settles used words from South African Dutch and other indigenous languages even though adequate English words existed, for example veld, spruit, rondavel and words absorbed from isiZulu and isiXhosa such as boma, imbongi and abakwetha.
It is difficult to say when such words became part of South African English – some may be used for a while and then fall away while others retained. However, what these examples show is that South Africans are increasingly taking ownership of the South African variety of English and using it with pride as a symbol of a multicultural and multilinguistic national identity.