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ENG1502

This document contains an assignment on language varieties in South Africa. It discusses two main varieties: South African Standard English and Black South African English. South African Standard English developed from British English introduced by settlers and traders in the 19th century. It follows British grammatical conventions. Black South African English emerged among black South Africans restricted from learning in English. It developed unique pronunciation and grammatical features, and sometimes does not follow the norms of Standard English. Examples show the extension of progressive tenses to stative verbs and lack of tense marking in dependent clauses in BSAE compared to Standard English. The document analyzes differences between the two varieties and concludes by clarifying their origins and distinguishing features.

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34 views8 pages

ENG1502

This document contains an assignment on language varieties in South Africa. It discusses two main varieties: South African Standard English and Black South African English. South African Standard English developed from British English introduced by settlers and traders in the 19th century. It follows British grammatical conventions. Black South African English emerged among black South Africans restricted from learning in English. It developed unique pronunciation and grammatical features, and sometimes does not follow the norms of Standard English. Examples show the extension of progressive tenses to stative verbs and lack of tense marking in dependent clauses in BSAE compared to Standard English. The document analyzes differences between the two varieties and concludes by clarifying their origins and distinguishing features.

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zinhle shinga
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You are on page 1/ 8

Module code: ENG1502

Assignment 1( 2023)
Table of content

Question 1 1-3
Question 2 4
Reference page 5
Declaration form 6
Question 1
The focus of this assignment will be on the language varieties found in South
Africa. Though there are several language varieties found In South African
today I will focus on Black South African English [ BSAE] and South African
Standard English. I will be discussing how they came about into existence and,
also differentiate on the two varieties.
South African Standard English
According to the Oxford English dictionary the British's arrival at the Cape in
1806 marks the beginning of English history in South Africa. English was
introduced to South Africa during the 19th century by troops, administrators,
missionaries, settlers, and fortune seekers, as was the case in most colonies. It
developed as a southern African language as a- result of the migration to the
Kimberley diamond mines (1870) and Witwatersrand gold mines (1870), as
well as the settlements of 1820 (in the Eastern Cape) and 1848–1862 (in Natal).
The term standard English means that it is the acceptable form of English, The
acceptable version of English for formal speaking and writing. Children are
supposed to learn how to write in primary schools using the conventions of
standard English. Although SAE has acquired some characteristics as a spoken
language by being blended with many accents and languages, it nevertheless
adheres to the British grammatical system.

Black South African English (BSAE)


When are talking about Black South African English we are referring to variety
of English that is spoken by black people in South Africa for example the Zulu
and the Xhosa speaking people who don’t not use English as their mother
tongue. The BSAE came about when during the Bantu education the black
pupil were not allowed to be taught by native English speakers, this restricted
their exposure of the standard English as a result, the English spoken in black
schools took on specific pronunciation and grammatical characteristics, giving
rise to BSAE. Therefore, the BSAE is considered as a non-standard variation.

1
When we say that BSAE is considered as a nonstandard variation this is
because sometimes it does not follow the norms of Standard variations, I will
illustrate this using BSAE's morphosyntactic characteristics and comparing it to
the of the South African Standard English. (Adapted from Gough 1996:61-63).
Let's examine a case in point below.

Extension of the progressive aspect to stative verb

Whenever a verb expresses a state or situation rather than an action, it is


referred to as a stative verb some of the examples of the stative verbs include,
like, love, have, know etc. . Whereas actions verbs which are also known as
doing words include words like jump and run. In South Africa standard English,
it is known that one can does not use stative verbs in
continuous verb tenses, Whereas in Black South African English this is very
common hence, the extension of the progressive aspect of stative verbs has
been identified as a characteristic feature of the BSAE. Studies on Thee BSAE
reveal that the BSAE speakers typically do not adhere to these conventional
rules in favor of the careless use of the progressive component.
For the purpose of understanding this let’s look at the following examples.

(a) I am having a brother.


(b) I am liking you.

Both example A and B would be considered grammatically incorrect according


to the South African Standard English. One would rather say (a) I have a
brother, (b) I like you.

Tense sequencing
The Oxford Learner’s Dictionary defines the term ‘past tense’ as “the form of a
verb used to describe actions in the past.” According to the Cambridge
Dictionary, the past tense form of the verb is “used to describe verb forms in
many languages used for actions that have now finished”.
According to Grammarly In standard English the rule is when an independent
clause is in the past tense, any dependent clauses must also be written in the
past tense, not the present tense or the future tense, However, the past tense
is not usually marked IN BSAE, according to Gough (1996:62) and De Klerk and
Gough (2002). Let’s look at the following examples.

2
(a) Sipho was bathing because his feet are dirty.
(b) He took the bus and go home,
The verb is linguistically unmarked for tense in both examples (1) and (2). It
encodes the present tense as a result, yet in both instances, the verb phrase
refers semantically to a past event only the verb in the first clause is marked
for the past tense. This means that in South African standard English this would
be considered as grammatical incorrect, let’s us consider example A’, because
the tense of the independent clause is in the past (was bathing), the verb in
the dependent clause should also be in the past, as illustrated in the sentence
below:
Sipho was bathing because his feet were dirty.
These examples give us a clear understanding on how Black South African
language is different in some areas to the South African Standard English.

Conclusion
This assignment served to identify two language varieties in South Africa and
compare the two varieties by mentioning the differences in the use of the
language in both the varieties, it achieved this by giving examples to give a
clear understanding on the differences in both varieties.

3
Question 2

a. Colloquialism

b. I doesn’t care of you black.


I don’t care if you are black.
You gotta big terrible
You have got big troubles.

C. I mean for sure now.


All the people are made like God.
And the God I know for sure.
He made everybody with one heart.
For sure now this heart is the same.
That means we are one.
No man is different from another.

4
References
De Klerk, & Gough. (2002). Black South African English. In R.
Mesthrie(Ed).language in South Africa,(pp.356-378).Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Gough, D. H. 1995. ‘Black English in South Africa’, in V. De Klerk (ed.), English
Around the World: Focus on Southern Africa. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Gough, D. 1996. Black English in South Africa. In V. de Klerk (ed). Focus on
South Africa. Amsterdam: Benjamins. pp. 53-77.
Hornby, Albert Sydney. Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary of Current
English / [by] A.S. Hornby; Editor Jonathan Crowther. Oxford, England: Oxford
University Press, 1995.
Makalela, Leketi. Nativization of English among Bantu Language Speakers in
South Africa, 2007https://escholarship.org/uc/item/

5
Declaration form
I (full names and surname): ____Zinhle Yvette Shinga_______________
Student number: _____16357310______________
Module: ENG1502
Declare that,
1. I understand what plagiarism entails and am aware of the University’s policy
in this regard.
2. I declare that this assignment is my own, original work. Where I used
someone else's work, whether a printed source, the internet, or any other
source, I give the proper acknowledgement and include a complete reference
list.
3. I did not use another current or previous student's work, submitting it as my
own.
4. I did not allow and will not allow anyone to copy my work with the intention
of submitting it as his or her own work.

Signature: ___________________
Date: ______24/03/2023_________________

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