PART XVIII
Oceania, continued:
How to speak British beyond England (continued), course 310
Africa and the Atlantic
- Southern Africa
By its constitution, South Africa has eleven official languages, one for each of the major tribes; of which one is the White tribe. Accents vary significantly between ethnic and language groups. Home-language English speakers, Black, White, India, and Colored, in South Africa have an accent that generally resembles British Received Pronunciation, modified with varying degrees of Germanic/Dutch inflection due to Afrikaans.
The Colored community is generally bilingual. English accents are strongly influenced by primary mother-tongue, Afrikaans or English. A range of accents can be seen, with the majority of Coloreds showing a strong Afrikaans inflection. Similarly, Afrikaners and Cape Coloreds–both descendant of mainly Dutch settlers–tend to pronounce English phonemes with a strong Afrikaans inflection.. The range of accents found among English-speaking Coloreds, from the distinctive “Cape Flats/Colored” English” to the standard “colloquial” South African English accent, have a strong presence.
Black Africans generally speak English as a second language. Accent is strongly influenced by mother-tongue, particularly Bantu languages. Urban middle-class Black Africans have developed an English accent, with similar inflection as first-language English speakers. Within this ethnic group, variations exist: most Nguni [Xhosa, Zulu, Swazi, and Ndebele] speakers have a distinct accent, with the pronunciation of words like “the” and “that”, “devil’ and “dust”, respectively, and words like “rice” as “lice”. Cape Flats English originally came from and is best associated with, inner-city Cape Colored speakers.
Sotho [Tswana, Northern Sotho, and Southern Sotho] speakers have a similar accent, with slight variations. Tsonga and Venda speakers have very similar accents with far less intonation than Ngunis and Sothos. Some Black speakers have no distinction between the “I” in determine and the one in decline, pronouncing it similarly to the one in “mine”.
Black, Indian, and Colored, students educated in former Model C schools or at formerly White tertiary institutions will generally adopt a similar accent to their White English-home-language speaking classmates. Black South African English [BSAE], is spoken by individuals whose first language is an indigenous African tongue. BSAE is considered a new English because it has emerged through the education system among second-language speakers in places where English is not the majority language. South African accents vary between major cities, particularly Cape Town, Durban, Johannesburg, and province regions. Accent variation is observed within respective cities—for instance, Johannesburg, where the northern suburbs [Parkview, Parkwood, Parktown North, Saxonwold] tend to be less strongly influenced by Afrikaans. These suburbs are more affluent and populated by individuals with tertiary education and higher incomes.
The accents of native English speakers from the southern suburbs [Rosettenville, Turffontein] tend to be more strongly influenced by Afrikaans. These suburbs are populated by tradesmen and factory workers, with lower incomes. The western suburbs of Johannesburg [Newlands, Triomf–which has now reverted to its old name Sophiatown—and Westdene] are predominantly Afrikaans speaking. In a similar fashion, people from predominantly or traditionally Jewish areas in the Johannesburg area [Sandton, Linksfield or Victory Park] may have accents influenced by Yiddish or Hebrew ancestry. Regardless of regional and ethnic differences in accents, South African English accent is often confused with Australian or New Zealand English by British and American English speakers. The present author finds it to be softer generally.
Examples of South African dialects vocabulary: braai=barbecue, from Afrikaans; impimpi=police informant; indaba=conference/meeting, and kwela-kwela [taxi/police pick-up van] from Zulu; madumbies=a type of edible rootfound in Natal; mama [a senior woman]; mbaqanga-a type of music; morabaraba=a board game; sgebengu=criminal, played in IsiXhosa and IsiZulu speaking areas; skebereshe=a loose woman, found in Gauteng; y’all=for second person plural pronouns in ISAE [a linguistic assurance standard]; aweh=a greeting or in agreement.
British influence: arse, bum=ass; chemist=drugstore; dinner-jacket=tuxedo; dustbin= garbage can; petrol=gasoline; silencer=muffler; flat=apartment. A large amount of slang comes from British origin, such as naff=boring/dull/plain, or “China” from cockney rhyming slang. [my old china/china plate=mate]. Expressions used in English dialect borrowed from other South African languages: to come with=”are they coming with?” as influenced by the Afrikaan’s phrase hulle kom saam [lit. “they come together.” In Afrikaans, saamkom is a separable verb, similar to meekomen in Dutch and mitkommen in German, all translated into English as “to come along/come with?” It is also encountered in areas of the Upper Midwest of the United States, which had a large number of Scandinavian, Dutch, and German, immigrants, who, when speaking English, translated equivalent phrases directly from their own languages.
Now-now, as in “I’ll do it now-now, from the Afrikaans nou-nou, this expression describes a time somewhat later than that referenced in the phrase “I’ll do it now” or maybe even, “When I get around to it.”
The borrowed Afrikaans interjection ag, meaning “oh!”, as in, “Ag, go away man”! (Equivalent to German “ach”). SAE uses a number of discourse markers from Afrikaans in colloquial speech.
