People are often surprised when I tell them that South Africa has 11 official languages, and that not many people have English as a mother tongue. This existence as a small language with pressure from so many others makes South African English the most complicated variant of English in the world.

 CLASSIFICATION:

Family:
Indo-European

Group: Germanic

Subgroup: West Germanic

VARIETIES:

Black South African English, Indian English, Coloured English, Afrikaans English – variants of South African English

Speakers

Around 3
457 467 people use it as their home language in South Africa.

South African English is probably the most complicated variant of English anywhere because it has always existed in a complex multilingual and multi-cultural environment. English is one of eleven official languages, and mother-tongue English-speakers number just three and a half million in a population of over forty million people – under 9%. So the position of SAE is markedly different from that in multi-lingual but predominantly English-speaking countries such as Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and the
USA. There is the potential for influence by many more languages than in other English-speaking communities, and these languages have widely divergent origins and structures.

General Vocabulary

A few notable South African English words:

dwaal – state of befuddlement

smaak – to like, to enjoy

lekker – nice

handlanger – assistant

skelm – dishonest person, rogue, rascal

veld -field/pasture

spoor – animal tracks