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446 book reviews
Rajend Mesthrie, ed.
A Dictionary of South African Indian English. Cape Town: uct Press, 2010, xxviii and
260 pp. ISBN 978-1-91989-536-9.
The book under review is a dialect dictionary that records the words of a vari-
ety of English which developed out of language contact and second language
acquisition during language shift amongst the Indian population in South
Africa. It is not an inclusive dictionary because its focus is on the word stock
that is specific to this part of the population in South Africa and thus excludes
the items that are shared with the rest of the local population, as well as bor-
rowings from Indian languages that have become part of global mainstream
English (e.g. bungalow, shampoo or bangle). The dictionary is of interest to a
broad range of scholars and language users: sociolinguists studying the devel-
opment of new Englishes and those specifically interested in varieties of
English in the diverse Indian Diaspora; lexicographers with a particular inter-
est in borrowing; speakers of South African English who come across words
specific to this ethnic variety in daily life; or even literary scholars interested in
works written by South African Indian authors.
It is possible to contextualize the dictionary within the lexicographic work
done on contact varieties of English more generally, and within the develop-
ment of these varieties more specifically. According to Schneider (2007: 52)
dictionaries play an important role in the evolution of New Englishes because
they promote endonormative stabilization. In a similar vein, Algeo (1992: 210)
distinguishes three stages in the lexicographical history of nations such as
Australia, Canada, New Zealand and South Africa: at stage one, only slang or
dialect usages of the new variety are taken note of; at the second stage, British
dictionaries start recording the new words from the (former) colonies;
and finally, lexicographers compile dictionaries that take the usage in the new
nation as the norm. This last stage in the lexicographical history of a national
variety marks the achievement of linguistic independence. English in South
Africa became a codified language in this sense with the publication of
A Dictionary of South African English (1978), A Dictionary of South African
English on Historical Principles (1996) and the South African Concise Oxford
Dictionary (2002).
South African English is obviously not a monolithic entity but comes in dif-
ferent regional and ethnic varieties, one of them being South African Indian
English (saie), which has a strong regional base in the province of KwaZulu
Natal. Contact between English, local African languages (notably Zulu), and
Indian languages (Bhojpuri, Awadhi, Urdu, Tamil, Telugu and Dakhini) dates
back to the period when indentured labourers were brought to the colony to
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work on the sugar cane plantations. In fact, the dictionary was published
150 years after the arrival of the first indentured labourers in the province of
Natal. Additional influence from Gujarati, Meman and Konkani can be traced
back to subsequent migration of Indian merchants between 1875 and 1911.
Indian South African English is thus not a homogenous ethnic variety, either,
but ranges from usage that is acrolectal, i.e. close to the local variety of stan-
dard English, to more basilectal varieties with obvious structural influence
from the substrate that goes beyond accent and lexical borrowings. The book
under review is thus not simply a dictionary of standard SAIE but attempts to
record the lexis of all varieties on the lectal cline, as well as different registers
(e.g. informal, jocular, slang, vulgar). At the same time, the author is keen to
point out that, contrary to popular expectation, what is peculiar to SAIE is not
limited to slang (p. xiv). While the dictionary is based on sociolinguistic inter-
views, written texts and the author’s knowledge of the variety (p. ix), its aim is
not merely to describe the lexis peculiar to the Indian population in South
Africa, but also to make a contribution towards codification and standardiza-
tion, especially with respect to the spelling variation attested in the commu-
nity: “It is hoped that the suggested spellings of headwords in a consistent
fashion will give guidance to future writers in the dialect and perhaps help
create a standard orthography that represents the phonetics of SAIE without
looking too ‘foreign’ to be English” (p. xiii).
The front matter provides background information, among other things, on
the underlying methodology (ix–xiv) and the linguistic background to South
African Indian English (1860–2010, xxi–xxviii). Users are provided with a map
to guide them through the different parts of the dictionary entries (p. x) and
they are given non-technical definitions of the register and etymological labels
(p. xi–xii), spelling conventions and pronunciation guides (p. xvii–xx). In addi-
tion to the usual information on part of speech, pronunciation and meaning,
the entries provide some encyclopedic background information (including
usage in other varieties of Indian English), spelling variants and illustrations
(typically in the form of quotations from literature or made-up examples based
on the author’s inside knowledge of saie). Related words based on the head-
word are described within the entry of the headword (e.g. dhāl-rōti, a type of
unleavened Indian bread stuffed with crushed and seasoned yellow lentils is
listed under dhāl, n. and not rōti, n.). The short sociolinguistic history of South
African Indian English allows users unfamiliar with this variety to place the
lexicographic information in the main part of the dictionary in the wider con-
text of this variety of English, detailing e.g. the contacts with the local Zulu
community in Natal and influence from Fanagalo, the historical lingua franca
(based on Zulu with some traces of English and Africaans, p. xxi–xxii).
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A notorious problem for lexicography in language contact situations is hav-
ing to draw the line between borrowings on the one hand and instances of
code-switching on the other hand. The solution offered by the author of this
dictionary is to adopt a conservative stance: “Where there is some doubt
whether a lexical item now belongs to SAIE or is, in fact, a manifestation of
code-switching between an Indian language and English, the policy has been
to exclude it from the dictionary” (p. xiii).
The dictionary comprises loanwords from the various Indian languages
originally spoken by the indentured labourers, such as akka (from Tamil)
‘maternal uncle’s wife’, chicha (from Konkani/Urdu) and the variant form kāka
(from Gujarati/Hindi) ‘paternal uncle’, bhūjo ‘to roast, especially nuts etc.’
(from Bhojpuri). According to the editor, a lot of loanwords which were taken
from Bhojpuri are given in their more standard Hindi form and the etymologi-
cal label Hn (for Hindi), thus underrepresenting the actual contribution of
Bhojpuri in the main part of the dictionary. Due to language contact with local
African languages and Africaans, there are borrowings from these languages,
too (e.g. chebe ‘beard’ from Zulu and klaar ‘to finish, to complete’ from
Africaans). For some terms, even though the immediate source might be a
local language such as Africaans, the ultimate source might be a language out-
side South Africa, as is the case with borrie (the regional term for turmeric in
the Cape region) that derives from Malay boreh. The dictionary also lists
numerous words of English origin whenever their meaning in SAIE diverges
markedly from the one found in standard varieties of English, be it in meaning
(e.g. knickers ‘men’s shorts or undergarments’, a luck, when referring to a per-
son, denotes either a ‘loose female’ or ‘naïve male’, shift ‘to move house’) or
grammatical function (e.g. should as an auxiliary referring to habitual past
actions or nice and as a degree adverb, e.g. in nice and burnt for ‘badly burnt’).
Typical phrasal chunks with characteristic local (i.e. SAIE) meanings, such as
how’s the goings? (an informal greeting), grew up in front of me (of someone
known closely from birth), or to give someone beans/to give someone carrots
(pester/threaten/chastise someone, typically in a sporting context; inciden-
tally, two separate entries under the headwords beans and carrots) are also
included in the dictionary; this category is even occasionally extended to
include proverbs such as cabbage can’t boil twice as a set phrase in a refusal to
repeat what one has just said (see cabbage). It is the idiomatic uses of (decep-
tively) English words and phrases that will likely make this dictionary a useful
source of information for anyone interested in reading works of fiction written
by a South African Indian author; how else is one to arrive at the correct read-
ing of the main clause in When the teacher left to go to the office, we were killing
it one way as ‘we were laughing excessively’. Finally, the dictionary also includes
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the occasional proper name such as Appelsammy and Naidoo (name of a radio
programme), Laudium (suburb in Pretoria) or Sai Baba (religious leader with a
large international following) with relevance to the South African Indian com-
munity. The word gatsby, on the other hand, is an eponym in SAIE (with
regional currency in Cape Town) denoting a special kind of sandwich. It is
obviously impossible to give a detailed, critical assessment of all of the approx-
imately 1700 entries in this dictionary. The following discussion will therefore
necessarily be selective.
As pointed out previously, the dictionary does not to include loanwords
from Indian languages that are part of global English. Exceptions were made
for items (including ashram and sari) that the editor found to be unfamiliar to
the local South African population (p. xxiii). Browsing the entries in the main
part, some additional exceptions to this policy spring to attention, namely
words such as bāsmathi, curry or ayurvedic. With bāsmathi rice the author jus-
tifies the inclusion by pointing out that it is now “internationally branded via
the us” (p. 19). For curry, the motivation for inclusion seems to be the subtle
difference in meaning: while the term is used in English to refer not only to a
spice mix and the dish that is cooked with it, the SAIE use is more limited in
that it does not include the spice mix nor dishes with a tomato base (p. 57); the
term used for the spice mix is masāla (p. 149). With the globalization of tradi-
tional Indian cultural traditions such as Yoga and the adoption of eastern med-
ical practices, a term such as ayurvedic is likely to have more than local currency
(according to OED online, it is first attested in 1788, but the glosses provided in
the 1995 Mail on Sunday and the 2000 Popular Science quotations indicate that
it is still a specialized term not known to the general public). In the context of
the popularity of Indian cuisine, similar discussions could be added on lassi,
nān, tandoori, rōti, or thikka; chicken tikka masala has even been ranked
Britain’s favourite dish for a number of years. These items illustrate just how
difficult it may be to judge the currency of a loanword beyond a narrowly
defined community of speakers, short of conducting a comprehensive survey.
In the introduction, the editor comments on other varieties of English in the
Indian Diaspora, notably in places such as Suriname, British Guyana, Trinidad,
Mauritius and Fiji. The varieties of English that evolved from language contact
in these countries have also been influenced by input from various Indian lan-
guages, and it would be of interest to scholars of the Indian Diaspora which
loan words are shared and which might be more local borrowings. While
Mesthrie (p. xxvii) points out that “comprehensive information on the Indian
element in the English of these parts of the Commonwealth is not available to
me”, this is only partly true. The Macquarie Dictionary of English for the Fiji
Islands (2006), while being a general language dictionary, contains copious
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evidence on the Indian (Fiji Hindi) element in Fiji English. Entries under bh- (a
typical Hindi, word-initial consonant spelling) shows that there is, indeed,
quite a bit of overlap between SAIE and FE with respect to loan words from
Hindi: bhabhi, Bhagwad Gita, bhaini/bahini, bhajan, bhajia/bajia, bhangra,
bharata, bhindi/bindi and bhuja (n.)/bhujo (v.) are attested in both dictionaries;
the Macquarie Dictionary also has Bhagwan and bhaiya (‘brother’ or ‘friendly
term of address for a male Indo-Fijian’) whereas the Dictionary of SAIE has a
variant form, namely bhai which, in addition to ‘brother’ is used as a respectful
form of address for older relatives (p. 23). The South African dictionary fea-
tures additional entries under bh-, such as bhanga, bhanoi, Bhojpuri and
bhundi, but if these entries are indicative of the Hindi element in the two vari-
eties, the overlap is more extensive (also in terms of the meanings and uses)
than the differences between FE and SAIE with respect to loans from Hindi.
Even this brief comparison shows that the dictionary under review contributes
valuable material to a study of lexical borrowing in the Indian Diaspora.
At times, the ‘encyclopedic’ information in the entries provides useful back-
ground for a deeper understanding of the language contacts that gave rise to
SAIE. The introduction to South African Indian English (p. xxi) merely men-
tions that Bhojpuri was one of the languages spoken by the indentured labour-
ers. Linguists interested in the Indian Diaspora will have come across the term
‘Bhojpuri Hindi’ and start wondering whether Bhojpuri was simply a regional
dialect of Hindi or a separate (related) language. The entry on Bhojpuri may
initially be somewhat confusing, as the headword is defined as an Indic lan-
guage which was “known as Hindi in Natal.” The cross-reference to Bihāri is
more helpful, because it points out that Bhojpuri was one of the languages
spoken alongside Awadhi, Magahi and Maithili in the province of Bihar and
that these are “intermediate in structure and vocabulary between Hindi in
Central India and Bengali in the east, …”; moreover the entry on Bihāri hints at
a possibly diglossic situation, with Hindi as the H-variety and Bhojpuri or
Bhojpuri Hindi as the L-variety (p. 25).
The cross-references to variant forms and related words are generally very
helpful. However, while not having checked cross-references systematically, I
found one that did not work: under masāla-tea (a tea made by boiling milk with
a particular masala, tea leaves, water and sugar), the reader is referred back to
chai, but the entry for this word is missing between chāf and chalo (p. 42). As is
the case with basmati rice, chai has been branded in the US as chai latte and is
now also available as an instant drink (containing powdered milk, spices and
tea) or as tea bags with spiced black tea on a more global scale. The entry may
have been edited out precisely because chai has been globalized without omit-
ting the cross reference under masāla-tea.
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The headwords occasionally also include useful grammatical information,
e.g. in the case of Gīta (short reference to the Bhagavad Gīta, one of the sacred
Hindu texts), which appears to permit variable article use when it appears in
English (i.e. The Gīta, probably in analogy with The Bible). However, treatment
of variable article use in headwords does not seem to be entirely consistent, as
the parallel case of Ramāyan shows: the lemma only gives the variant without
the definite article, whereas one of the examples provided to illustrate its use
in saie is with the definite article (p. 194). Grammatical information is also
contained in entries such as staffs, which can be a count noun in SAIE and
other contact varieties of English.
Browsing through this dictionary, users learn a lot about Indian culture and
religions, in general, but also about South African Indian culture, more specifi-
cally. They also get a glimpse of the creativity of South African Indian slang.
Since slang tends to be relatively changeable, parts of the dictionary may date
quite quickly. All the same, the dictionary is a specialized one that provides
information on a dialect of English spoken in South Africa and thus can be
seen as a useful supplement to more general dictionaries such as the South
African Oxford Concise Dictionary (2002). It will no doubt also be a valuable
source for the linguistic study of the word stock of South African Indian
English.
References
Algeo, John. 1992. New Zealand English and the dictionary. In Claudia Blank (ed.),
Language and Civilization: A Concerted Profusion of Essays and Studies in Honour of
Otto Hietsch. Volume II, 209–19. Frankfurt: Peter Lang.
Schneider, Edgar W. 2007. Postcolonial English. Varieties around the World. Cambridge:
University Press.
Dictionaries
A Dictionary of South African English. 1978. Edited by Jean Branford: Cape Town.
A Dictionary of South African English on Historical Principles. 1996. Edited by Penny
Silva and Wendy Dore. London: Oxford University Press.
Macquarie Dictionary of English for the Fiji Islands. 2006. Edited by Paul Geraghty,
France Mugler and Jan Tent. Sidney: Macquarie.
Oxford English Dictionary (oed) online, at http://www.oed.com.
journal of language contact 7 (2014) 425-459 Downloaded from Brill.com08/20/2021 09:33:31AM
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South African Oxford Concise Dictionary. 2002. Edited by the Dictionary Unit for South
African English. Cape Town: Oxford University Press Southern Africa.
Marianne Hundt
Department of English, University of Zurich
m.hundt@es.uzh.ch
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