Some Problems in Recording and Analyzing South African English Vocabulary (The Experiences of an Outsider)

David L Gold

doi:10.5788/4-1-1075

Abstract

This article describes some problems in collecting and studying South African English vocabulary on the basis of non-South-African texts faced by a linguist who is a native speaker of American English. The questions are thus: Are non-South-African texts just as reliable as South African texts? More reliable? Less reliable? And is a linguist who is a native speaker of a different variety of English just as reliable as a native? More reliable? Less reliable? It is suggested here that the best way of studying a language, if possible, is by having both insiders and outsiders look at the material. <b>Keywords:</b> abbreviations, african languages, afrikaans, american english, australian english, black english, british english, canadian english, capitalization, careful use of primary and secondary sources, convergence, definitions, dictionaries, differential dictionaries, dutch, english, etymology, family names, folk etymology, french, german, hebrew, initialisms, latin, lexicography, misprints, nonce forms, overdefinition, personal names, place names, postal terms, prepositions, productivization, reflexive pronouns, slang, slips of the tongue, south african english, spelling, status and usage labels, surfers' terms, teamwork, underdefinition, yiddish, zoological terms

Highlights

English vocabulary on the basis of non-South-African texts faced by a linguist who is a native speaker of American English
We may note that certain American publications write KwaZulu rather than kwaZulu because Americans are not used to seeing place names beginning with a lower-case letter
Current American English seems to have only blackboard, which is frequent in South African English too.3 chocolate contemptuous and offensive 'non-White'

Summary

Discussion

The earliest quotation I have is from Lavan 1994, which suggests that this word was coined by Wallace Ford, an American. The construction with of would come more naturally to my lips (Greetings of Peace, bed of a stream) and I am more inclined than ever to think that Afrikaans accounts for certain noun + noun collocations in South African English which in other varieties of English would be unusual. A14, reads: "Bothaville: In a city considered 'volkstaat,' or white country, a lone black woman stood in line to vote for the first time She said she could not give her name because it would violate the rules of the polling place." Since no South African is quoted and the caption-writer was presumably a speaker of American English, use of volkstaat as a mass noun here is likely to be an American English nonce form, especially since it is immediately followed by the mass noun white country. Whether the word is a South-Africanism needs to be determined and it requires an etymology

Conclusions