South Africa 45

Listen to South Africa 45, a 60-year-old man from Wynberg, Cape Town, South Africa. Click or tap the triangle-shaped play button to hear the subject. 

Both as a courtesy and to comply with copyright law, please remember to credit IDEA for direct or indirect use of samples. IDEA is a free resource; please consider supporting us.

BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION

AGE: 60

DATE OF BIRTH (DD/MM/YYYY): 28/08/1957

PLACE OF BIRTH: Wynberg, Cape Town

GENDER: male

ETHNICITY: Cape Malay

OCCUPATION: teacher

EDUCATION: tertiary education: Diploma — College of Printing; Higher certificate — Adult Basic Education & Training

AREAS OF RESIDENCE OUTSIDE REPRESENTATIVE REGION FOR LONGER THAN SIX MONTHS:

The subject has never lived outside South Africa.

OTHER INFLUENCES ON SPEECH:

The subject was born and raised in the Western Cape Province, where he also received his education and worked as a photolithographer. As an adult, he moved to Johannesburg, where he was still working as a teacher at the time of this recording.

The text used in our recordings of scripted speech can be found by clicking here.

RECORDED BY: Nadia Barnard

DATE OF RECORDING (DD/MM/YYYY): 09/01/2018

PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION OF SCRIPTED SPEECH: N/A

TRANSCRIBED BY: N/A

DATE OF TRANSCRIPTION (DD/MM/YYYY): N/A

ORTHOGRAPHIC TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH:

Ja, schooled in Wynberg, and then I schooled at South Peninsula High, completed in 1975 [subject laughs], and from there I, er, ap-applied for an apprenticeship, and I went to, er, do a photolithographer course. One of my buddies’ brothers just qualified as one of the first photolithographer of color. Because previously it was just for the, you know, the more privileged [subject laughs] community at the time.

We finished school in ’75; you must have heard of the ’76 riots? So we were very, er, in our thinking, I think we were very, er, revolutionary inclined, you know, like, er, hell, you know, to overcome the, the system. Whichever avenue we took or decision we made education-wise, there was the, the so-called Coloured edu- and Indian education; there was the, er, and then they had their Bantu education, you know, those … But, um, when I said that we were, er, revolutionary in our thinking, I think it was mainly due to our teachers’ conscientizing us.

The surname changed, from what I heard that was; at one stage it was “Waalpoort,” so I don’t know; that is from my great-grandfather’s side. He looked very much like m- , er, Jan Smuts, actually. My granddad was in the Second World War. He was a teacher by profession, and then what happened? He then gave up teaching because it wasn’t paying him, and, er, they were — he was recruited into the, into the military.

My grandmother is ori-, sh-, her family tree traces down, they, they’re from, um, Malaysia. But because of the influence of the Malaysian, er, grandparents coming into South Africa, and, er, being, being obviously oppressed also in a way, you know, to the extent that, um, they changed a lot of their way of doing things, to be able to hold onto the Islam. I think this whole thing o- of the gadat, where they used to have this gatherings of people of the community? At night they would have a kind of a “prayer meeting,” I would call it. Um, that was, I think it was politically motivated, you know? It was a way that they could get together, and discuss the, the political issues, because they spoke Malaysian.

We communicated in the house mainly in English, but, er, most of my friends in the, in the community — they spoke Afrikaans. So, er, it would be a real kombuis-Afrikaans soos hulle se. [Subject laughs.] Ja.

“Jee.” They, they use the word “jee,” like for “yes.” It’s an — I think it’s an Urdu word meaning. So when I speak to the Indian community, er, friends of mine, then I would say “jee,” you know? Meaning “yes.”

Like, when we would say, like, er, something is good, like, you know? We would use Afrikaans words: “dis kwaai, man, dis kwaai!” You know? Of dis nca, nca, you know? Like that was more of a, the skollie style of, of saying nc- it’s nca. If something is on it’s place, like, you know? Ja, those, those words; I had a whole list of them, man!

The cultural influence that we had in our lives, um, from the Malay side: the words like “tramakasie” to say thank you, you know? Er, “kanala”: please. “Qan Allah”: It’s like comes from an Arab, from, from, from the Malaysian words; the word “piesang” was never an Afrikaans word. The ending of the word is the “-ang” sound: “piesang,” “kaparrang,” um, “jamang,” yes, a toilet, ja. Those were all, er — and it was used in the Afrikaans language, you know?

TRANSCRIBED BY: Nadia Barnard

DATE OF TRANSCRIPTION (DD/MM/YYYY): 18/01/2018

PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH: N/A

TRANSCRIBED BY: N/A

DATE OF TRANSCRIPTION (DD/MM/YYYY): N/A

SCHOLARLY COMMENTARY: N/A

COMMENTARY BY: N/A

DATE OF COMMENTARY (DD/MM/YYYY): N/A

The archive provides:

• Recordings of accent/dialect speakers from the region you select.

• Text of the speakers’ biographical details.

• Scholarly commentary and analysis in some cases.

• In most cases, an orthographic transcription of the speakers’ unscripted speech.  In a small number of cases, you will also find a narrow phonetic transcription of the sample (see Phonetic Transcriptions for a complete list).  The recordings average four minutes in length and feature both the reading of one of two standard passages, and some unscripted speech. The two passages are Comma Gets a Cure (currently our standard passage) and The Rainbow Passage (used in our earliest recordings).

For instructional materials or coaching in the accents and dialects represented here, please go to Other Dialect Services.