Talk:South African English

message: Kuratowski's Ghost has been removing 'nonsense' left right and centre from this article, rendering it rather dead. Rather than going at it with a machete, perhaps some of the value could be restored, but in a way that meets Ghost's high standards. As an ignorant reader, I can understand "pawk the kaw dahwn tahwn", not the IPA. Now the IPA may be definitive for the experts, but a casual reader can't understand it, and can understand "pawk the kaw dahwn tahwn". I personally know people who sound like this. All the disclaimers for the purist can be put in place, but cutting it out has taken value from the article.
Similarly, *work → weck — , which Ghost has excised. I personally know someone who pronounces the word work like 'weck'. So it's not nonsense. Fix the IPA if it's wrong. Add whatever clarifications about this - but stop removing everything! Greenman 08:52, 3 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Writing things like pawk is meaningless because it is not at all clear what is meant by aw. To me it looks like a way to decribe the vowel in words like "saw", "paw", which is not at all the the same vowel used by first language English speakers in SA for the vowel in "park", not even close. Writing pahk for New Zealand English is even more meaningless since "ah" could denote almost any pronunciation of the "a". Kuratowski's Ghost 12:26, 3 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Exorcising the nonsense

message: Okay, so here's what I'm thinking - I don't think the "pidgins" that Afrikaans, Zulu, Xhosa-speakers use (which is, for a start, not a specific thing - people who's home language is Venda, for example, range in English proficiency from being indecipherable to not sounding any different to an Anglo-African when speaking) count as South African English at all. They're just incorrect. You don't tell someone who speaks French badly that he's using a different dialect of French; he's just not speaking it properly. Likewise, South African English is the English which is spoken by South Africans whose home language is English, or by those who speak it as well as those English-speaking South Africans. Such things as confusing "he" and "she", or "I can like to wear a jean pant" (to quote Jeremy Mansfield) are not English. What's everyones' take on this? Can I delete that paragraph? Joziboy 07:00, 12 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Please do. Zyxoas (talk to me - I'll listen) 07:33, 12 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: We are closer to upper-class British than Americans or Australians, the pronunciation of the "a" in "park", "father"  as a longer version of the vowel in "hot" being the obvious example of this. Kuratowski's Ghost 23:13, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

text: Well I suppose there isn't really a uniform pronunciation - the article says as much. Someone from KZN would flatten "i" sounds: fish -> fush (which sounds a lot more like the New Zealanders than the British). I know when I moved to the UK it was vowel sounds that created the biggest misunderstandings. Apparently I pronounce "desk" like Brits pronounce "disk".. and the way we pronounce "off", "poor", "tour" etc still amuses my British friends, who pronounce them very differently to that. Joziboy 06:55, 14 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Pidgin versions 

message: I have doubts about the assertion that Eastern Cape English is the regional variation most influenced by Afrikaans. Thanks to the 1820 settlers, the Eastern Cape is the part of SA where English has been longest established - it's this, rather than any Afrikaans influence, that I thought was responsible for the characteristically broad Eastern Cape accent. 
More generally, I think the influence of Afrikaans on South African English is overstated. Looking at the examples given in the article: 
"Are you coming with?" is recognisably derived from "kom jy saam?". But I fail to see the Afrikaans influence on a phrase like or "do you know who I am". "Just now" in English may correspond to "net nou" or "nou die dag" in Afrikaans - but these are colloquial Afrikaans, and you could just as well argue that it's a case of Afrikaans being influenced by SA English as one of SAE being influenced by Afrikaans.
The rather flexible use of "now / now-now / just now" by South Africans does however reflect usage in other parts of the continent. "Sasa" in Swahili, "soon" in East African English, or "já" in Angolan Portuguese can all mean anything from "now" to an indeterminite time in the future.
Yes, nameless, I strongly agree with your general assertions here, wrt ECape English and wrt the influence generally of Afrikaans on SA English. Please see my lengthy comments in the section above (the section with the somewhat irrelevant title "Pidgin versions").
Brockle 15:41, 7 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: "Boomslang" is Afrikaans - not merely "influenced". It literally means "tree snake" but actually is the common name of a highly venomous species of tree dwelling snake. (Also note that it is written as one word.) Roger (talk) 19:51, 25 September 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Afrikaans influence 

message: cites of the country  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 138.88.60.40 (talk) 01:01, 14 December 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  zimbabwe 

message: Exactly.  I was genuinely curious about this dialect.  Then I realized that this is one of the worst dialect articles on Wikipedia.  The phonology section needs to be much larger. 208.104.45.20 (talk) 05:14, 24 December 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  This Article Sucks 

message: It appears to be common in some varieties of South African English to use inversion in indirect/embedded questions (I don't know when is the plane going to land, We need to create awareness of what is autism).  I've found online sources for this in Indian and black varieties of South African English, but I'd like a more comprehensive account of its distribution.  (Here's a white South African using this construction: .)  This is apparently a common feature of World Englishes and L2 speakers of English in general.  Is the 'standard' English pattern (I don't know when the plane is going to land, We need to create awareness of what autism is) common in some varieties of South African English?   Chris Johnson (talk) 16:43, 16 August 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm a native SA English speaker. Your examples strike me as plain wrong. If one "adjusts" the punctuation of your first example one gets:  "I don't know. When is the plane going to land?". Your second example looks like a common error by a second language English speaker. I don't think there is anything particularly South African in your examples. Roger (talk) 17:58, 16 August 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Inversion in indirect/embedded questions 

message: There seems to be a cultivated variety of South African English.  One of my teachers seems to speak it.  I couldn't describe it to you phonetically right now, but it sounds a lot like RP to my ears.  It doesn't sound like stereotypical South African English. Thegryseone (talk) 22:23, 27 August 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: The stereotypical South African English is a Hollywood invention resulting from American actors trying (and failing) to imitate an Afrikaan speaking person speaking English. Kuratowski's Ghost (talk) 22:59, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

text: Well stereotypical South African English is probably also found in British movies, so feel free to drop "Hollywood" :P The point is that no South Africans speak in the manner portrayed on screen. That annoying kiddie faced actor in Blood Diamnd managed a good approximation of an Afrikaans speaking person speaking English but this is hardly what first language English speakers in South Africa sound like.  Kuratowski's Ghost (talk) 14:19, 19 November 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I can confirm what Kuratowski's Ghost says. South Africans who are or were heard speaking English reasonably frequently in the international media: Nelson Mandela, Desmond Tutu, Ernie Els, Thabo Mbeki, Francois Pienaar, Jacob Zuma, Charlize Theron, all have one thing in common besides being South African - Not a single one of them is a mother tongue English speaker! In Charlize's case of course she has deliberately cultivated an American accent. Roger (talk) 20:26, 19 November 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Cultivated South African English

message: The article devotes too much attention to Malan's book which is a humorous look at low income Afrikaans speaking people in a few northern suburbs of Cape Town attempting to speak English. Such "English" is hardly representative of Cape Town English let alone South African English, in fact despite being a Cape Town English speaker myself I can't even understand the title of the book. Imagine if someone stuffed an article on British English with info on a book on how English is pronounced by Panjabi's in Brick Lane. Kuratowski's Ghost (talk) 23:10, 18 November 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Malan's book

message: Its a real shame that in such a mature article the column for SA English is completely blank!!! Unfortunately I don't know 
IPA well enough to do it myself. Roger (talk) 00:41, 4 December 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Please people! Does absolutely nobody know how to use the International Phonetic Alphabet? I'm currently fighting what looks like a losing battle just to keep the column for SA English in the table - there are people who want to delete it because it is empty! Please help!!!!! Roger (talk) 17:37, 13 January 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: I know how to use it.  I just don't know how to transcribe the phonemes of South African English.  I know the common phonetic realizations of some of their vowels, but I don't think that's what they want. Thegryseone (talk) 18:45, 13 January 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[IPA chart for English dialects]] 

message: Questionable:
This lexicon influenced British English through soldiers returning from the Boer War and through returning British settlers with a significant number of Afrikaner settlers who left the Union of South Africa in 1931. 
Highly questionable:
South African lexicon enriched the British lexicon more by the arrival of white South African settlers of both British and Afrikaner descent who left their home country in 1994.
Really? This suggests that British people now say 'howzit', 'you coming with', 'braai', and 'just now' - the only people in the UK I know I do are South Africans and Zimbabweans! As for the use of the word 'settlers', please - people who came to the UK from South Africa were migrants!  Quiensabe (talk) 10:28, 24 May 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: However dubious the claims quoted above I can think of one word that has come into British (or even more widespread) English from Afrikaans: "trek" and its variants such as "trekking". Its adoption probably dates from the mid to late 19th century. Roger (talk) 12:13, 28 May 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Also, off the top of my head, "commando" and "aardvark". - htonl (talk) 15:23, 28 May 2010 (UTC)
replies: text:  And kop (at a stadium). 169.1.79.165 (talk) 19:24, 16 May 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Influence on British English 

message: I'll explain why I'm asking if you want, but now I'll get straight to the point:
In your opinion, is the following question easily answerable in one word, or does it depend? 
In South African English, what's "Association football" called?
  
Chrisrus (talk) 04:05, 24 August 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Soccer, although football is sometimes used in situations where its meaning is unambigious. If we take organisation names as an indication, we have the South African Football Association (SAFA) and the Premier Soccer League (PSL), while club names vary in the use of "soccer" or "football". If you use "football" without disambiguation many white South Africans (particularly those older than ~50) would assume you are referring to Rugby. Roger (talk) 14:30, 27 August 2010 (UTC)

text: It's soccer :) Greenman (talk) 21:17, 27 August 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  SAE word for [[Association football]] 

message: The article says that SA English uses 'highway'  instead of 'motorway'. This is totally false! In SA Motorways and highways are different things! Motorways tend to be mid-sized, whilst highways are bigger and go further. Thus they do use the term 'motorway'.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jemappelleungarcon (talk • contribs) 03:13, 3 August 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: I have not heard people use motorway in South Africa. Usually they just use the road name ("N2") - otherwise highway. Wizzy…☎ 07:33, 3 August 2012 (UTC)

text: We do not use the term motorway at all. The historical reason why we use the American term rather than the British is because the South African National road system was directly inspired by the US Interstate Highway system. Roger (talk) 08:06, 3 August 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Motorway & Highway 

message: some south africans don't say are e.g. in johannesburg  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 105.228.211.218 (talk) 06:08, 18 February 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: The article does mention that SAE is mostly non-rhotic - see the first sentence in the Pronunciation section. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 08:01, 10 September 2014 (UTC)
replies: text:  I think the first comment meant that some South Africans leave out the word "are" when they speak, e.g. in Johannesburg and Durban it is common to have a sentence such as "we going to watch the rugby" or "you talking kak", i.e. they're completely omitting the word "are" and they will even write their sentences this way. Which is completely fine because the verb is implied and the sentence remains intelligible. 169.1.79.165 (talk) 19:20, 16 May 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Are 

message: Most of this article consists of unsourced statements, and the article has been flagged as such since 2007. I'm guessing that it seems a pity to cut out the majority of the text. Does anyone have sources? Totorotroll (talk) 15:46, 7 April 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: I've rewritten the section about consonants, as it was identical to the content of Bowerman (2004). I think I'll be able to do the same with vowels. Peter238 (talk) 12:34, 22 May 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Unsourced 

message: I came to this article with the specific purpose to find out what differences in spelling, if any, there are between SAE and BE, and found nothing. I think other readers might be interested too. Do they simply use BE in writing? FunkMonk (talk) 06:30, 9 February 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: I think so. 169.1.79.165 (talk) 19:27, 16 May 2016 (UTC)

text: Yes, except of course for words that don't occur in British English. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 20:06, 16 May 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Spelling difference? 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: I noticed that this article has not been discussed in awhile. I plan to edit it for a class project, and I just wanted to throw a few ideas out there. First, I plan to make sure that any uncited information is either corroborated or removed. I also want to organize the leading section better so the whole article follows more smoothly from this intro. This will likely involve giving the different types of South African English their own section instead of keeping them in the first paragraph. I also plan to add sections on Grammar, History, and Geographical Distribution and update any old statistics. Additionally, I plan to include a discussion on the social function(s) of South African English and its varieties, if such information exists. I found some preliminary academic sources to start my work:
Branford, William. A Hand-Held Dictionary of South African English: Some Problems of English Lexicography in a Multilingual Context. , 1978, ProQuest, http://ezproxy.library.arizona.edu/login?url=https://search-proquest-com.ezproxy2.library.arizona.edu/docview/58084164?accountid=8360.
BROOKES, H. (2004), A Repertoire of South African Quotable Gestures. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology, 14: 186–224. doi:10.1525/jlin.2004.14.2.186
“English in Africa.” English in Africa, vol. 5, no. 1, 1978, pp. 80–81. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/40238421.
Murphy, M. L. "Defining People: Race and Ethnicity in South African English Dictionaries." International Journal of Lexicography, vol. 11, no. 1, 1998, pp. 1-33, ProQuest, http://ezproxy.library.arizona.edu/login?url=https://search-proquest-com.ezproxy2.library.arizona.edu/docview/58338129?accountid=8360.
Silva, Penny. “The 1820 Settlement: Some Aspects of Its Influence on the Vocabulary of South African English.” English in Africa, vol. 5, no. 1, 1978, pp. 61–70. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/40238417.
Taylor, Tim. “Anthropological Linguistics.” Anthropological Linguistics, vol. 36, no. 4, 1994, pp. 521–524. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/30028394.
Watts, H. L. “English in Africa.” English in Africa, vol. 7, no. 2, 1980, pp. 90–91. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/40238480.
If anyone has any input, I'd love to hear your thoughts!Sparks9714 (talk) 18:36, 11 March 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: Hi , Welcome to Wikipedia. Please note that we never top-post on talk pages, new topics are started at the bottom. It would probably be a good idea to post a brief note at WT:WikiProject South Africa about your interest in this article (and link to this discussion). Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 22:38, 25 March 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks for the tip, Rodger! I will post a note on this project page. I will be editing the South African English page for citations, and primarily adding content in the realms of phonetics and sociolinguistics, which are the focuses of my class.Sparks9714 (talk) 23:48, 25 March 2018 (UTC)
thread_title: Update and Ideas

message: — Assignment last updated by UICLing (talk) 10:56, 20 October 2022 (UTC)
replies: text: Thank you for the feedback Dquin3. I do hope to find more up to date articles and research on Black South African English and cite the information I find. Also I would hope to find pictures for this page that follow Wikipedia's regulations but it is a bit challenging with copyright violations. I have also reached out for help to correct any errors in the citations.  Lramir54 (talk) 03:24, 3 November 2022 (UTC)

text: User:Brian redmond jr thank you for your feedback. We appreciate the kind and detailed praise to our contributions to the article. We will look into fixing the examples in the article to make them more visually appealing and easier to read.  Lramir54 (talk) 03:29, 3 November 2022 (UTC)
thread_title: Wiki Education assignment: The Study of Language

message: A distinctive feature of SA English is the use of "to stay" for a long-term residency where most other English dialects would use "to live" - e.g. "We stayed in Cape Town for five years" as opposed to "We lived in Cape Town for five years." Maybe this should be mentioned. Muzilon (talk) 08:45, 2 January 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Stay vs live 

message: I was reading this article and was confused by the inclusion of the geography section. It seems to just be copied from the "Geography of South Africa" article and has no relation to language so why is it included on this article? Haydaddy (talk) 20:39, 6 April 2024 (UTC)
replies: text: Agree, I don't see it has much relevance. Greenman (talk) 05:21, 7 April 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Geography