When you’re late for something in Johannesburg, you can always say you were “held up by robots” and no one will think twice. That’s because in South Africa, a robot is a traffic light. The hosts discuss this and other terms for those helpful semaphores. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Held Up by Robots”
Hello, you have A Way with Words.
My name is Summer. I’m from Dallas.
My story that I wanted to share with you takes place probably in 1992 or 93 when I was in high school. And I had a friend who was from Cape Town, South Africa.
And the first time that we went to pick him up from his house, he gave us directions through email and we didn’t really proof them. We just printed them up.
And it wasn’t until we got across town toward his place that we realized he used a word that we’d never heard before in this context. He told us to take a right at the robot.
At the robot? To take a right at the robot?
Correct, to take a right at the robot. Huh.
And it was around Christmas time, ironically, just as a side, it was around Christmas time, and right where this supposed right was supposed to be, we thought, there was a mall with these robotic statues in front of it.
So to turn right at the robots would have put us into the mall, and we knew that he didn’t live there. He might have.
We actually began turning right at everything we could think of that could be a robot, but it was very confusing. We never did find his house.
There were no bright, shiny humanoids. Warning, warning, danger, Will Robinson. The data year stood still. It did not happen.
It turns out, though, that what he meant was the streetlights, the traffic lights. But I’ve never heard them referred to as robots since, and I’ve actually done traveling outside of the U.S., and I’d never heard them referred to as robots before.
So I just thought that was pretty funny.
Well, Summer, had you gone to South Africa, you would have heard everybody talking about the robots.
Oh, really?
Yes. Yes, that is the term in South Africa since the 1930s or so.
I think I can explain why that meaning seems so odd to us.
Okay.
The fact that it dates to the 1930s is the clue. The word is just about that old. The word was new then, and there were a lot of, in the early days of the use of the word robot, there were a lot of weird applications of it.
They weren’t necessarily all towards these machines that looked and behaved like humans. And so this particular use stuck around.
And you’ve seen it used over the decades to mean anything kind of mechanical or automated that might do the job that used to be done by a human.
You’ve been using the word robotic and automated sort of interchangeably.
Yeah.
The concept.
Yeah, exactly.
So instead of having a human standing on the street corner between the lanes of traffic waving stop and go signs, you put a machine up to do it.
That’s really fascinating, yeah.
It really, yeah, it makes me want to move to South Africa just so I can say, sorry I’m late, I got caught by the robots.
Oh, if the robot was malfunctioning, I couldn’t make it today.
Exactly. It’s great.
Oh, well, thank you very much. That was really interesting.
All right.
Oh, cool. Thanks for your interesting question.
Oh, yes.
Bye-bye.
Bye-bye.
Grant, I have told you before that I do have a special fascination with traffic lights. Just because I had a little toy traffic light as a child.
What does your doctor say?
Caution.
You know, and then later in high school, I kind of collected them a little bit. But the other thing that I’ve been collecting is words for traffic light in other languages.
Oh, really now?
Yes, and my favorite is the official Hebrew word for traffic light because, of course, in Israel, you have to come up with all these words for new things, new technology, because the language is thousands of years old.
The word is ramzor, and it comes from a word that means hint or wink. And I think the idea, I don’t know if it’s because a traffic light in Israel is just sort of a suggestion.
Or maybe you should slow down now because there’s a vision. Maybe you should, maybe you shouldn’t. It’s up to you. We’re not going to tell you what to do, but whatever you want to do.
Slow down already yet. Maybe go.
Well, if you got a call about something like that, some strange word you heard in another language you thought was English, we’d like to help you figure it out.
Our number is 1-877-929-9673, or you can send an email to words@waywordradio.org.
