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South Africa - White South African English

The native variety of White South African English (WSAE) is spoken by the British immigrants, who have been coming to South Africa from the early 19th century on, and their descendants. Therefore, it resembles very much the British standard. It also shares some features with the English spoken in Australia, which was settled at about the same time by the British.

Apart from some regional variation, there is social variation in WSAE. It is usually divided into a cultivated, a general and a broad variety. The cultivated variety is very close to the British standard, whereas the broad variety shows some deviations. It is not clear for all of these distinct features, whether they are due to Afrikaans influence or whether they are remnants of ‘Settler English’, which was influenced by the old English dialects spoken by the first settlers

Table Mountain (Cape Town, South Africa) © Heiko Schittek 2006

WSAE is primarily distinguished from other native varieties by its accent and its loanwords. South Africans use Afrikaans loanwords, among the first of which are for example boer (farmer) and aardvark (an African animal). Regarding the vowel system, a perceivable raising of the DRESS and TRAP vowels as well as centralisation of the KIT vowels takes place. This is possibly due to a chain shift, similar to that in other Southern Hemisphere Englishes, e.g. Australian English.

Reviews of available literature on books dealing with this English variety can be found here