From the blurb:
“Bunny chow, larney, lakker, rōti-ou, thanni, Satyagraha, Kāvady...these are all terms from South African Indian English, an important dialect in South Africa, particularly KwaZulu-Natal, and one of the better-known varieties of English in the Linguistics literature. It arose out of the language accommodations that occurred as Indians arriving in South Africa in large numbers in the nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries adjusted to life in a new colony. Out of a high degree of multilingualism, it was English that eventually became the main language of South Africa’s one-million-strong Indian community. Yet because of the colonial and apartheid hierarchies and separations, English developed as a major dialect in the community drawing to a large extent on its own resources. Today it is a vibrant dialect, increasingly found in plays and novels and even advertising in South Africa.”
“Bunny chow, larney, lakker, rōti-ou, thanni, Satyagraha, Kāvady...these are all terms from South African Indian English, an important dialect in South Africa, particularly KwaZulu-Natal, and one of the better-known varieties of English in the Linguistics literature. It arose out of the language accommodations that occurred as Indians arriving in South Africa in large numbers in the nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries adjusted to life in a new colony. Out of a high degree of multilingualism, it was English that eventually became the main language of South Africa’s one-million-strong Indian community. Yet because of the colonial and apartheid hierarchies and separations, English developed as a major dialect in the community drawing to a large extent on its own resources. Today it is a vibrant dialect, increasingly found in plays and novels and even advertising in South Africa.”
227 x 153 x 17 mm | softcover
Rajend Mesthrie is Professor of Linguistics in the Department of English at the University of Cape Town. He is the co-author of Introducing Sociolinguistics (Edinburgh University Press, 2009), World Englishes (Cambridge University Press, 2008), and editor of the Concise Encyclopedia of Sociolinguistics (Pergamon, 2001).
