New slang
Our next door neighbour always starts braaing early on Saturday afternoon.
First, there is the thick wave of smoke as the fire starts, then, a few hours later after he has burnt the wood down to coals, the smell of cooking meat.
I pick up some words without thinking about them. We talk about braaing, about having a braai, I no longer say “grill” or “barbecue” except when talking to people back home.
I talk about the “motorway;” about the guards at the estate where a friend stays checking the “boot” of the car and I don’t realize that these are new words for me until after I’ve said them.
I pick up other words intentionally, I start calling traffic lights “robots,” pickup trucks are “bakkies” and sometimes, when it’s great, I’ll say that something is “lekker.”
Some things don’t change. Brinjals are still eggplants, maybe aubergines; baby marrows are still zucchini; I still want ketchup and not tomato sauce.
Sometimes I change the way I talk not for fun but to be understood.
I talk about where I “stay” not where I “live” but it is not a reflex.
I use the word “must” instead of “have to” or “should” but only when I think of it.
There are new words, for things I didn’t have words for before, mostly for food.
I eat bunny chow, boeries and kotas with atchar; pap with chakalaka at the shisa nyama.
There are new landscapes, the bushveld, the highveld, koppies and kloofs.
Other times it is confusing.
Do I want cans of Zamalek or dumpies?
I say “if you do” as if I was saying “when you do in the future” and people don’t understand.
When someone says they took a “taxi,” they mean a minibus, not a meter cab.
And then there are always the first pieces of South African slang I picked up, a warning about waking up with a babalas if you get motherless the night before.
I’m sure there are other words, turns of phrase, that I no longer think about, things that have become so ingrained after a year that I don’t even remember I used to describe them differently.