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| Kif! In other words, those are pretty nice shells |
We chat all the time, you see, thanks to
smartphones, facebook and email. She’s just told me that she thought she was
being “very international” by using the word “fundi” until it dawned on her
that no-one understood what she was saying. When a South African says “fundi”,
they mean “expert”. To most others, it is gobbledygook.
Strange
variety
What makes it even funnier is that Vick has
been in a very senior position on a very large UK newspaper, but speaks a
rather strange variety of the English language: the South African kind.
I, too, did not know that “fundi” was a
South African word, and I raise it with my sister K (she lives in Geneva,
remember, where she has a top job in a big multinational). “Oops, I use it all
the time,” she says.
A bit of research reveals that “fundi”
actually comes from the Nguni (Xhosa and Zulu) word for teacher: umfindisi. It also has some other fairly
obscure meanings:
we could, for example, be referring to a fundamentalist greenie in Germany (but
we’re not).
So we chuckle at ourselves. The truth is
that South Africans rejoice in this rich English that has bubbled out of our
post-apartheid melting pot.
Peppered
chats
We liberally pepper our chats with words
that we know are South African, like “eish” (I’m shocked/annoyed/amazed), “eina”
(ouch), “kif” (nice/pretty), “muti” (medicine), “lekker” (nice) and, even, when
we’re very cross, “bliksem” (a naughty person, or to hit something). Those
words – there are a lot of them (try here for a taste) – are Afrikaans, Xhosa, Zulu or any one of South Africa’s 11
official languages.
We also have another whole decidedly South
African lexicon of English that we use all the time – and usually, we don’t know
there is anything odd about it. That applies to even the most sophisticated,
globally speaking, of us: people like Vick and K.
K, for example, adds that she’s just told
an American friend that she would “hold thumbs” for his wife, who’s just been
for a job interview. “He asked how one held thumbs. When I explained, he said,
‘Oh you mean, like crossing fingers’.”
When she visited a few weeks ago, we
shrieked with laughter as she related how she was greeted with blank stares
when she declared that she would “fetch” her daughter. You fetch a thing (a dog
fetches his bone?), not a person. Then she kept us in hysterics as she ran
through a string of phrases that she has discovered are thoroughly South
African. So we will say that something is “not a train smash” (not so bad). We
will declare, “serious” (pronounce “see-ree-ous”, with lots of exclamations
marks), when we really want to make a point. Or we will say “ag, shame” when
something is cute.
Newsroom
run-ins
And when Vick visited, we literally rolled
on the floor with laughter as she described her London newsroom run-ins with
our peculiar language. She had problems, she said, with “just now”, which South
Africans interpret as “in a little while”. I am quoting her from memory, but
she says it’s close enough.
“When British people say it, they mean, ‘immediately’.
So at first, a lot of the subs thought I was being very pushy because
I kept asking them if they would complete tasks and stories ‘just now’.
Eventually we adapted it and they would ask me, Do you mean an English ‘just
now’ or a South African ‘just now’?”
Robots
To South Africans and no-one else, a “robot” is a “traffic light”. As Vick discovered: “I once asked the picture editor to put across an image of a robot – I needed to use it as a cut-out. I waited and waited ... We were getting dangerously close to deadline, so I strode across to urge the picture desk into action. She opened up a folder full of pictures she’d put across in response to my request ... It was crammed with computer robots from science fiction movies!
“And then there was the day when I complimented
one of my colleagues on her new jeans. I said, ‘Ooh, I like your pants!’ She
looked horrified, blushed, and then asked me whether her trousers were
see-through. It’s ‘trousers’ over here; ‘pants’ are knickers.”
On that note, I am going to water the
vegetable garden before the sun goes down.
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