South African English

English in South Africa stems from a first settlement in 1795 in the region of Cape Town and a more significant settlement in the eastern cape region (around Port Elizabeth) in the 1820’s. English has co-existed in South Africa with Afrikaans, the colonial form of Dutch, and many native languages of the Khoisan and Bantu families. A notable sub-variety of English is that spoken by descendants of the Indian population which was moved to KwaZulu-Natal between 1860 and 1911.

In general South African English is like other major varieties in the Southern Hemisphere and shares, for instance, the raising of short front vowels, e.g. [bɛd] for bad, [bɪd] for bed, with Australian and New Zealand English. A distinctive feature is the diphthong flattening in the PRICE lexical set, i.e. one has [prɑ:s] rather than [prɑɪs]. In addition there are features of morphology and syntax which can be traced to interaction with Afrikaans.

   Sample sound file