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The following slang words used in South African originated in other parts of the Commonwealth of Nations and subsequently came to South Africa. bint – a girl, from Arabic بِنْت. Usually seen as derogatory. buck – the main unit of currency: in South Africa the rand, and from the American use of the word for the dollar.
Words of Afrikaans origin have entered other languages. British English has absorbed Afrikaans words primarily via British soldiers who served in the Boer Wars. Many more words have entered common usage in South African English due to the parallel nature of the English and Afrikaner cultures in South Africa. Afrikaans words have unusual ...
(Informal) a ditzy woman (derogatory term), from the Afrikaans word pop, meaning a doll. potjie A cast iron dutch oven. robot Besides the standard meaning, in South Africa this is also used for traffic lights. The etymology of the word derives from a description of early traffic lights as robot policemen, which then got truncated with time. [34 ...
Hindi is a protected language in South Africa. According to the Constitution of South Africa, the Pan South African Language Board must promote and ensure respect for Hindi along with other languages. [6]
(Germany, Holland, & South Africa) a black person. [28] See also Kaffir. In Germany usage of the word "Kaffer" identifies the speaker as sympathizing with the Nazi ideology. Kaki (South Africa) a British person. From "khaki", the colour of the uniforms worn by British soldiers in the Boer War and "Kak" the Afrikaans word for shit. Kanake
Tsotsi is a Sesotho, Pedi or Tswana slang word for a "thug" or "robber" or "criminal", possibly from the verb "ho lotsa" "to sharpen", whose meaning has been modified in modern times to include "to con"; or from the tsetse fly, as the language was first known as Flytaal, although flaai also means "cool" or "street smart".
Correspondingly, the word is "sometimes used as ugly slang for a black person". [19] Use of the derived term hotnot was explicitly proscribed in South Africa by 2008. [20] Accordingly, much recent scholarship on the history of colonial attitudes to the Khoisan or on the European trope of "the Hottentot" puts the term Hottentot in scare quotes. [21]
In 1924, the Oxford University Press published its first version of a South African English dictionary, The South African Pocket Oxford Dictionary. Subsequent editions of this dictionary have tried to take a "broad editorial approach" in including vocabulary terms native to South Africa, though the extent of this inclusion has been contested. [15]