Talk:List of South African English regionalisms

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This list is more comprehensive than the table version under South African English Vocabulary, perhaps this list should replace that table, or the two should be combined?

Also there should be some standard separation for words that are of clear Afrikaans origin.

(I agree with both of the above points, not sure who made them :).

Just to justify my removal of "rock up" - this isn't uniquely South African, as a quick google search will show. The unselfish gene 15:02, 14 January 2006 (UTC)

The main problem with the list is that it includes terms used by different groups all in one list as if all South African English speakers use these words. Many of the words are simply Afrikaans words that are only used by people from areas that regularly mix Afrikaans and English. Others are only used in township English. Some words listed are used only by very specific groups like Indians and Jews. Why put all these into one list? Kuratowski's Ghost 22:28, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

Rewrite

This article is in desparate need of a rewrite. I propose that it be restricted to what are really lexical differences in South African English not a list of every single Afrikaans word that has been thrown into an English sentence by someone, that list can perhaps be moved to a separate List of common Afrikaanisms or similar. Also all slang terms should be moved out to appropriate articles like "List of South African Slang Words" properly divided according to the groups that actually use those terms. Kuratowski's Ghost 14:24, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

I agree. This seems to be more of a list of Afrikaanism and has a stong focus on the concrete. What about including clear usage difference between South African English and other Englishes (e.g with multi-word verbs, other lexical chunks, discourse markers, word frequencies)? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 41.242.194.111 (talk) 09:40, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

Keep this list on topic

Please don't add every arbitrary Afrikaans word you can think of. Yes in some parts of SA people mix English and Afrikaans, this does not mean that arbitrary Afrikaans words and Afrikaans derived slang specfic to certain groups should be listed as if they are normally used by people in SA who speak English as a first language. Similarly some people mix in Zulu with English, don't add arbitary Zulu terms. Words like bakkie from Afrikaans and indaba from Zulu are ok because they have become standard, but saying things like babbalas for hangover or shongolo for millipede is not typical for a first language English speaker.

Don't add slang words that are specfic to certain areas or groups as if these words are normally used by all English speakers in SA, they certainly aren't.

I will start a separate article on List of South African slang words with subdivisions for specific groups where people can add stuff to their heart's content. Kuratowski's Ghost 00:07, 23 February 2006 (UTC)

Re: Keeping on topic

Fair enough, sorry about the community-specific words (I'm assuming you didn't like soutie or Mzansi). As the article on South African English states though, the dialect isn't homogenous. Young Joburgers perhaps use more Zulu words than other cities or generations, but they're definitely integrated into our speech, not just thrown in sporadically - I've known shongololos as shongololos my whole life, and English is my mother tongue. Likewise zol, kif, and china (none of which come from Afrikaans or Zulu) and I think every English-speaking mother still calls medicine muti to their children. That said, I like the page on SA slang... just gonna put up a link to it :) Al

Since we should be using references, I think the criterion for inclusion here is that the word appears in a standard English dictionary but noted as being peculiar to South African English and not marked as slang. Kuratowski's Ghost 11:19, 23 February 2006 (UTC)

Sure, that sounds reasonable. I have the South African Concise Oxford Dictionary. So everything marked 'informal' goes to the slang list?

Sounds good Kuratowski's Ghost 13:36, 23 February 2006 (UTC)

Shongololos

I'm not sure why you're so determined to remove this word. I agreed to only put up words which weren't slang - and according the OED, shongololo/songololo is the South African word for a millipede, it's not informal. Joziboy 24 Feb 2006, 15:45 UTC

Eish, see-ree-yas? I haven't heard it used since I was a laaitie :) Kuratowski's Ghost 15:59, 24 February 2006 (UTC)

Ah, I see from the other talk page that you're Capetonian! That explains why you think the black languages have had minimal impact on SA English. Don't think I can imagine Capetonians saying shongololo, now you mention it :) Joziboy 6 March 2006, 10:27 (UTC)

Hi. I'm not, any kind of an expert, having just returned from my first trip to South Africa, but I wanted to add that two of my friends there - on from Joburg and one from Durban- used the term shongololo for the millipedes that kept crawling all over our campsite.

I grew up in Cape Town and my first language is English, but I we did refer to a millipede as a shongololo. It is difficult to draw a definite line, but we should distinguish between words like naartjie and bakkie that are genuinely standard in South African English and words that bilingual people just happen to mix with their English. If we include the latter a vast number of Afrikaans words and words from other languages would be included which would not be useful. It common in South Africa for people to mix English and Afrikaans in conversation, to the exent of switching in mid sentence or using an Afrikaans word that seems easier or more expressive in an English sentence or vice versa. However this does not make the Afrikaans word a genuine addition to South African English or the English word Afrikaans as the mixing tends to be highly arbitrary. On the other hand words like naartjie and bakkie are definitely much more widely used in South African English than tangerine or pick up truck.

biscuit

This is not a uniquely South African word, it is standard in British English. As far as I know it is only in North America that there is a different usage. We should not have words that are merely different from their equivalents in the North American dialect without being specific to South Africa otherwise we'd have to take most of the British/American list and include it here. Billion, candy floss, chemist, chips, cookie, flat, jam, jelly, lift, rubber, shop, spit, sweets and torch come into the same category. These words are widespread in many if not all English-speaking countries outside North America.

Since American English is more widely used and known I think these should be included. Never heard chemist used for a pharmacy and pharmacist outside SA. Chips in SA denotes both french fries and crisps which is different to both America and Britain if I'm not mistaken. I've heard British speakers use jelly for a preserve whereas in SA it only refers to gelatine deserts. Kuratowski's Ghost 23:44, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

I would disagree that American English is more widely known, as it is only spoken there whereas British English, or a form closer to British English than American English is spoken in Africa, Southern Asia, Australasia etc. However, this is rather beside the point as to me it makes little sense to include differences that are simply differences between South African English and American English and not unique features of South African English. If we were writing an article about say Colombian Spanish would we list all the differences between it and Spanish Spanish even if these differences were not unique to Colombia but found just as much in Venezuelan, Mexican, Argentinian etc Spanish? It is enough in my opinion to simply state that South African English shares many features with British English, perhaps with examples.

South African English, Australian English, Indian English, Ugandan English etc., while having a lot in common with British English, are clearly distinct dialects or groups of dialects of English, in the same way that American English is. This Wikipedia article should go some way to disabusing people of the idea that the world can be divided neatly into British and American English (which are merely two dominant varieties of the language).

The word 'chemist' is *very* widely used in Britain to mean a pharmacy. The biggest pharmacy chain in Britain is called "Boots the chemist" no less. It was the first result I got from Google when searching for 'chemist'. I have never in more than 13 years in Britain heard anyone use the term 'jelly' for jam or what would be called 'konfyt' in Afrikaans. As for chips, in Australia and New Zealand the word is used both for what are called in Britain chips and crisps too.

I disagree that "cookie" is used for cupcake - as a Natal English speaker, cupcakes are cupcakes. I think the writer might have been thinking of the Afrikaans, koekie. But the English "cookie" is (a) not really used, and (b) if it is, it is definitely not generally understood to be a cupcake. Perhaps that is some local variant? biochemza —Preceding unsigned comment added by 196.215.36.43 (talk) 14:22, 31 July 2010 (UTC)

"Bantu"?

Who are these "Bantu" refered to under "coloured", exactly? Zyxoas (talk to me - I'll listen) 09:21, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

British English is the standard for the language

British English, specifically the English used in the South of England, is the standard for the language. This article seems to imply that American usage is the standard, which is incorrect. There are a number of items here which this list claims are unique to South African and British English—since they're part of British English, they really don't belong in a list of dialectal terms, do they? Please clean this up. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 41.247.244.175 (talk) 17:05, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

Neither British nor American English is the standard for the language. There are many different standards (e.g Standard South African English). Which authoritative sources treat British English as the global standard? Are they in the majority? If a standard has to be applied (which it doesn't), English as lingua-franca (ELF) and American English are clearly the dominant varieties for non-native and native speakers. This is also true for pronunciation: Received Pronunciation (RP) and General American (GA) are no more valid or correct than other standards. An encyclopaedic article should seek to be descriptive not prescriptive, and certainly shouldn't be used to propagate people's petty prejudices.

Agree - all the the entires that being 'as in the UK' or 'as in Britain' should be removed, as they're abviously not South African English regionalisms - they're just English. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 194.73.121.7 (talk) 16:29, 15 January 2010 (UTC)

Formatting

Should we not format this list in a way similar to List of American words not widely used in the United Kingdom as per WP:GLOSSARIES? Knyzna1 (talk) 13:26, 19 February 2014 (UTC)

"kip"

Surprised to see this listed as specifically South African English for "nap", since "kip" is common British slang for "sleep", often for a short time - "I'll just have a kip".91.17.168.116 (talk) 18:02, 18 January 2018 (UTC)

Ousie

Short endearment meaning "Older sister" and not derogatory in my experience PennyFlowersFairy (talk) 04:17, 23 May 2020 (UTC)