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Posted on Saturday, May 21 @ 10:41:08 BST
Topic: Miscellany
 EASTERN PROVINCE WAS CRADLE OF SOUTH AFRICAN ENGLISH.
(Unfortunately there is no name or date of the newspaper this cutting was taken from. It was in a folder with 10 cuttings from "The Star" from 1957).
By Prof. L.W. LANHAM
Professor of Phonetics and Linguistics, Wi*****ersrand University.
Nearly 1,000,000 South Africans today use English as their mother tongue and probably 7,000,000 more use it as a second language.
The type of English we speak derives in a direct line from the Eastern Cape Settlers, says the writer, who has made a special study of South African English.
From them he traces the emergence of a "classless" South African English and at least some features of the typical "Ag pleez deddy" accent.
The history of English as a language of Africa begins with the arrival of the 1820 Settlers in what is now the Eastern Province. This was the first major group of permanent settlers sufficiently large and cohesive to develop and perpetuate a distinct local form of English.
The 4,000 men, women and children were drawn from widely different social classes and at least 25 regional dialects were represented among them. Most of the gentlefolk undoubtedly spoke Standard Southern British English, a geographically neutral class dialect, and strong social-class attitudes towards dialectal differences went with their manner of speech.
A man speaking in a marked regional dialect such as *****ney or Lancashire would have found it difficult to find acceptance in upper and upper-middle-class society.
Ingrained Social class divisions, so deeply ingrained in English society at that time, were certainly present in this intrepid group of pioneers, but the disasters which befell the Settlers in the hostile environment in which they lived for 40 years after their arrival, permitted a high degree of integral cohesion in the group and, in consequence, the dissolution of differences and divisions separating its members.
There is little doubt that, although the Settlers who came from Britain did not themselves lose their particular British dialects, their children and grandchildren,
Thrown together in the classrooms of the small towns and farms, very rapidly developed a uniform form of English.
Out of a welter of English dialects there grew in a remarkably short space of time a form of English which was not identical with any one of them, but presented a unique set of dialectal features deriving probably from several British dialects.
By 1860, a society without obvious class divisions had developed. Broadly speaking, the form of English which emerged was nearer to the Standard Southern British of the time than to any distinct regional dialect.
Possibly the majority of characteristic features of typical South African English today originated in Settler English which played a major role in present-day patterns of pronunciation.
The tendency to lose the glide in the dipthong “ai†(as in nice time) may be heard in Yorkshire today in much the same way as it occurs in typical South African English. It is interesting to note that almost all the schoolmasters of the small schools in the towns and villages of the Eastern Province until 1850 came from the North of England.
The diary of Jeremiah Goldswain is a fascinating phonetic record of a rural dialect of English which came to South Africa with a number of Settler families. The origin of many typical features of South African English can be found in this record.
Patterns:
Goldswain probably pronounced barrels as he wrote it: berrels and axels as eksels; a feature of pronunciation heard from many thousands of South Africans today. Dialects from Scotland and Ireland do not seem, however, to have left their mark on South African English in the same way as dialects from England, particularly those from the South.
In many families of Settler descent who have remained in the Eastern Province, the oldest living generation and the youngest have more or less the same patterns of speech ranging over the more extreme end of the scale. This feature of uniformity through age groups is rare in other parts of South Africa and adds weight to the contention that the Eastern Province is, to a large extent, the cradle of South African English.
In the opening up of the hinterland, including Rhodesia, Settler descendants played a prominent role and carried their dialect into English-speaking communities established in other parts of the country.
Even the settlement in Natal had in its earliest years, a preponderance of Settler descendants from the Eastern Province. Shepstone, who played such a prominent part in the opening up of Natal and negotiations with the Zulus, was a Bathurst schoolboy.
In the last quarter of the 19th and the early years of the 20th century, however, Settler English became submerged in a diversity of English speech brought by a new flood of immigration to rapidly developing areas outside the Eastern Province.
The development was stimulated by the discovery of gold and diamonds and a new society took shape, different from the classless, largely agricultural, society which continued to exist in the rural areas and small towns including the Eastern Province.
The new immigrants, the majority of whom were English speaking, were concentrated in the cities, particularly those which were growing around the mines.
Here, then, were the beginnings of the industrial society in South Africa, one which fosters social class divisions based on occupation, wealth and education (and, of course, family connections in Britain and Europe).
The new immigrants, falling naturally into such categories as managers, miners, artisans, reconstituted in South Africa a stratified social order to which they were accustomed in Britain and Europe.
The emergence of a class society was most obvious in Johannesburg where the directors and managers of mining houses became a generally recognised ‘upper class’.
Overt symbols of social-class membership flourish in a society of this kind and in Britain dialect was (and still is) firmly established as a social differential. Positive attitudes towards differences in manner of speech were to be expected, therefore, from the influential section of the new society.
Standard Southern British was the approved form and typical South African English, together with other purely regional forms of English was, to some extent, taken as a mark of poor education and an absence of the social graces.
Social attitudes to manner of speech continued strongly I the English-speaking cities until the Second World War. But since then there have been radical changes.
The third and last important factor I the moulding of South African English was the influence of Afrikaans. In the 19th century the influence of Dutch and later Afrikaans was not great, Dutch and English communities were separated geographically and by occupation, and there was little intermarriage during the first 50 years of 1820 Settler history.
Borrowed.
Until the turn of the century South African English was influenced only in a desultory way involving small groups. Widespread borrowing by one language from another, particularly in pronunciation and grammar, requires intimate social contact and the existence of fairly large groups of bilinguals. Such requirements were not fully met until the movement of the Afrikaner from the platteland to the cities and reached substantial proportions. This stage was probably reached in the late 1920's.
The clearest instance of borrowing from Afrikaans is the pronunciation of written ‘i’ in words like did, spirit, little, city, with the ‘i’ of Afrikaans wit and wil.
It is interesting to note that this is far more prominent in the under-40 age group than above that age level. No other major characteristic feature, can, with equal surety, be ascribed to Afrikaans.
Today, those South Africans who speak a form of English close to Standard Southern British English are mainly over 40; with forbears coming from Britain, generally not more than two generations removed; resident in one of the ‘English-speaking’ cities with predominantly English-speaking social contacts; mainly in the professional class.
This group is sensitive to differences in pronunciation along the conservative - extreme South African English scale, associating social values with these differences. Unless there is direct evidence to counteract the unfavourable impression, extreme South African English may well be regarded with disfavour. (a more favourable attitude towards Afrikaans English is not unusual.)
Influence:
In the past, this group was sufficiently influential to be able to transform their attitudes into social controls which ensured, for example, that radio announcers, English teachers in select schools, Anglican priests, etc. spoke a form of English close to Standard Southern British.
Successful property salesmen in the Northern Suburbs of Johannesburg can still count this dialect as a business asset.
The social control which this group has, in the past, been able to exercise is now very much weaker and, while opinions on dialect may still be strongly held by individuals, a progressive softening of attitude is a feature of the consensus held today. The diehards find it increasingly difficult to rally public opinion against "South African English" on the stage, the radio and in the English classroom.
The conservative speech of parents often contrasts strongly with the extreme South African English of their children.
Transcribed by Tombi Peck.
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