Looking ahead to the 2010 FIFA World Cup South Africa, Martha and Grant discuss some terms you might hear there. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “South African English”
You’re listening to A Way with Words. I’m Grant Barrett.
And I’m Martha Barnette.
A couple of friends of mine were very excited recently when they scored tickets to the World Cup in South Africa.
Sweet!
And it turns out that they’re from South Africa themselves.
So we’ve been talking about some of the language they’ll hear when they go back.
And my friends have convinced me that South African English is really liquor.
Do you know that word?
Excuse me? They’re all drunk?
No, it means really great. It means really cool. L-E-K-K-E-R with that sort of trill at the end, lecker.
And, you know, South African slang is this incredibly rich mixture of Afrikaans, which was developed from the Dutch, and indigenous languages like Zulu and English.
And, you know, if you’re following the World Cup, then you know that the word diski, D-I-S-K-I in South African slang doesn’t have anything to do with Frisbees.
It means a soccer ball.
Very good.
So it’s about football in general, or what we call soccer.
Right, right.
And Grant, Disky is also the name of a dance craze that’s sweeping South Africa right now.
It mimics the movements of soccer players.
It’s sort of this South African version of the Macarena.
It looks like a whole lot of fun and great exercise.
Oh, that’s fantastic.
You know, I’m looking here at an article from The Guardian, the British newspaper.
They had a great list of slang for people who were going to South Africa for the World Cup.
But, you know, one leapt out at me, the word Ubuntu.
Oh, yeah, that’s a great word.
And now they define this as the Southern African philosophy with the central tenet that a person is a person because of other people.
No man is an island.
But, you know, I know Ubuntu because it’s the name of a Linux distribution.
Wait, it’s software?
Yeah, Linux is an operating system for PCs.
And I have a computer at home that has a Linux distribution on it, Jaunty Jackalope or something like that.
And it’s called Ubuntu.
That’s the name that the people gave it because of this idea that everyone is working together to make this free software.
Oh, it’s free.
Okay.
Yeah.
Okay.
So they really haven’t overly commercialized it.
So it’s U-B-U-N-T-U.
And I think some people have used this for businesses.
It’s cool.
Yeah, well, no, fine.
Anyway, if you’d like to talk about South African slang or any other kind of slang or language in general, call us.
Or send an email to words@waywordradio.org.
