South African words in English  – then

and now (part 1)

Posted by Jean Branford on June 07, 2010

It is a pleasure and a privilege to welcome JeanBranford to our blog. A distinguished lexicographer, Jean is a world authority on the

English of South Africa and author of A Dictionary of South African English. This is the

first of two blogs from Dr Branford.

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South African words have been around in English for a long time. In a volume of 1837

Sir James Alexander, a doughty traveller set upon by dogs, reported:

On the cry of ‘voortsuk’ [from the Dutch voort seg ik , be off I say], from the master

followed by a stone, they left us.

In his next book of travels, he told of being rudely dismissed ‘by the shrill voice of an

old woman, desiring me to ‘loop’ or take myself off’. The early explorers and

naturalists knew that the stay-at-homes of Europe were avid for light on the unknown,

so-called ‘Dark Continent’, and they obliged with sure sellers, their pages liberally top-

dressed with the exotic names of its flora, fauna, peoples, and descriptions of the boers,

literally ‘farmers’, the descendants of the colonists established there by the Dutch East

India Company in 1652. The naturalists who hoped to, and did, bestow their own names

on new species which they identified, did likewise – several well before 1800.

Today we would be unlikely to use Loop [‘Go!’ a command to a team of oxen] to order 

someone off, but we would certainly use Voetsek for troublesome dogs – because we

don’t know another word for the purpose. ‘Shoo!’ comes to mind, but how feeble by

comparison! But the names of our birds, beasts, fish and plants do, in great measure

remain for the same reason.

A more general entry of South African words into English came with the Anglo-Boer

War, of 1899-1902. Soldiers’ letters home and news reports brought ‘… the African

veld into the parlours of Brixton and the pubs of Highgate’, as the South African writer 

Stuart Cloete put it, with such features of the landscape as veld [open country], krans [a

steep cliff], nek [a raised ridge connecting mountains], poort [a narrow pass or defile

between mountains], kloof [a narrow valley], kop/kopje [a hillock], and many more.

Kipling’s war verses too, gave permanency to much of this vocabulary, including: ‘is

boerbread and ’is biltong [dried meat] and ’is flask of awful dop [local brandy] – as

 

well as a taste of the place names which clearly fascinated him. His returned Cockney

Tommy even refers to ’ Ackneystadt [combining Hackney in east London with stadt ,

city] and Thames fontein [spring] when he vows to ‘get ’ence an’ trek  south’ [journey]. 

The diaries of the British Settlers of 1820 showed perhaps the first truly ‘South African

English’, in that they adopted and adapted words and uses, spelled as they heard them,

from their Dutch neighbours. One ‘tracked with my bucks …’ [‘travelled with my

goats’ from Dutch trek and bokke]. Another made ‘Tommy Larche’ for his children

[tammeletjie, boiled sugar candy]; and one followed the ‘spur’ [spoor , track] of a

suspected murderer. Even strange prepositional uses appeared:

… the shooting-match by your place [from Dutch biji, at]

‘… a tiger [tier , tyger , leopard] got under my wethers [sheep] and k illed 8 or 9 …’

[from Dutch onder , among].

Even their regular use of ‘place’ may owe something to plaas [farm].

Lastly, not for nothing was Cape Town called the ‘Tavern of the Seas’. As the port of 

call of mariners from all over the known world, words from many different languages,

especially French, German, Portuguese and Malay, made landing here and stayed.

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