Africanglish

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In honour of my return to South Africa, I thought I would share a few of the words and phrases that baffled me on my first trip here (and second, and third... ). The obvious ones are things like ‘braai’ (barbecue), ‘robots’ (traffic lights) and ‘biltong’ (dried strips of meat, a popular snack).



‘Ya, you just turn left at the robots, past the biltong store and we’ll meet you at the braai for some snoek’

‘Eh?’



I like to think I have adopted fairly successfully the language that is South African English. My family often make fun of my British-Yorkshire-South African accent, which is a product of non-Yorkshire parents, a Yorkshire childhood, and many months in South Africa trying to communicate with my boyfriend’s nieces and nephews who simply do not understand a word I say unless I speak in a South African accent.

I still slip up over the simple words sometimes. For example, just the other day, I asked a 9-year-old something about his jumper. He looked at me blankly, and asked, ‘What’s a jumper?’ ‘Oh! I mean ... sweater.’ ‘Do you mean jersey?’ Who knew communication could be so complicated between people who supposedly speak the same language?



However, it was the more subtle phrases that were completely nonsensical to me for a while. One particular phrase that still gets me is the use of ‘Is it?’ as a response to pretty much anything.



‘The Springbok game is on at 5.’

‘Is it?’



Fine.



‘I’m so tired today.’

‘Shame, is it?’



Is what?



‘We have no bread. Can you get some?’

‘Is it? Just now ya.’



WHAT?



Which brings us on to time phrases. In South Africa, time is divided up into now, just now, and now now. I am still not 100% sure which is which and when exactly they are referring to. ‘Just now’ can appear to mean sometime in the near past, or the near future. I think ‘now now’ is a more immediate version of ‘now’.



‘Did you get the bread?’

‘Yeah, just now.’



‘Did you get the bread?’

‘No, just now.’



‘When are you going to get the bread?’

‘I’ll get it now.’ (meaning I’ll get it soon, not now)

‘But I really need it.’

‘Ok, I’ll go now now.’ (meaning actually now).



The last one I’ll mention is the word ‘hectic’. To me, hectic mean what it says in the dictionary: ‘full of incessant or frantic activity’. To South Africans, hectic can mean busy, crazy, weird, unfortunate, unintelligible, fun, confusing, overwhelming ...





Hectic.

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Photos

Madiba
Nelson Madela statue in Pretoria