This chart shows the accumulation of South African English over time. Hover over the line to see the number of words by that date. Zoom sections of the chart to reveal more words (click and drag your mouse over a selected vertical and horizontal area).
This chart shows the accumulation of South African English over time. Tap the line to see the number of words by that date. Zoom sections of the chart to reveal more words (touch two fingers on the touch screen and move them apart to zoom in, or together to zoom out).
Early English explorers, traders and later colonists needed a vocabulary for all they had not encountered before: indigenous peoples from the Attaqua in the Western Cape to the amaZulu in the east of the country; new plants and animals from the aandblom to the zebra fish; new landscapes (highveld, lowveld, or hostile baboon-rock); and newly-observed social roles and cultural practices (sangoma, imbongi, abakwetha). Some words had already died out by the early 1900s after centuries of use (e.g. tiger-wolf, an early name for the hyena) or else the word survived but the thing it referred to did not (quagga, the subspecies of zebra, now extinct).
The earliest recorded entry in the Text Edition
Cape, noun - 1589 in W.S.W. Vaux World Encompassed by Sir Francis Drake (1854) 251
From Jaua Maior we sailed for the cape of Good Hope...This Cape is a most stately thing, and the fairest Cape we saw in the whole circumference of the earth, and we passed by it the 18. of June [1580].
