A Little Bit of Geography, History and, um..."English"

 It's a long post today and you're also going to get a bit of a "history" and "geography" and, um..."English" lesson. :P

My family and I are classified as "English South Africans" as English is our home language, although like many people living here, naturally-speaking Rachel and I are a real mixture of nationalities - Greek, English, Irish, Scottish, and Lebanese! We were born in S.A. and are 2nd generation S. Africans on our dad's side and 3rd on our mom's. Our great-grandparents were born in New Zealand and Sudan and our grandparents (Dad's side) were born and raised in Egypt and later immigrated to S.A.
(History lesson finished, now for the geography.)

There are about 47 million people living in South Africa. They come from many different cultures, backgrounds and origins. (You can read more about South Africa's population by clicking here). So you can imagine that there are many different languages spoken in the country. Actually S.A. has 11 official languages and then lots of others besides. (Click here for more info). Of course all these different languages have an effect on one another and are often mixed-in to each other.

English is understood by most people and is used as the official language for business and by the media, etc. But as a home language it ranks only 5th out of the 11. Although South Africans speak English it's not always easy to understand them as there are many words and phrases that are only used here. As one writer puts it: "SA English has a flavour all its own, borrowing freely from Afrikaans - which is similar to Dutch and Flemish - as well as from the country's many African languages, with some words coming from colonial-era Malay and Portuguese immigrants."

We thought it would be fun to do some posts about some S.A. words and phrases, so keep a look out for up-coming ones on S.A. English. :)