(Where ‘Now Now’ Means Later and Friendship Is an Active Threat)

By Helene Waters

South Africa, the country where I was born.

It has the most fantastic sunsets, unique wildlife, and food that will have you going back for more every single time.

Braais are a particular favourite, so much so that we even have National Braai Day.

Cooking over an open flame, the smell of meat and spices filling the air. Boerewors sizzling on the grid, chops browning over the coals, and everyone mysteriously appearing the moment the food is nearly ready.

NEVER, EVER refer to it as a BBQ.

And we NEVER need a special occasion to have a braai!

But this is not a travel advert for my home country.

This is an introduction to South African English.

South Africans pride ourselves on being straight talkers. We mean what we say and we say what we mean.

Except, that’s a complete lie, because half the time only we can understand what we actually mean, while blithely assuming the rest of the world possesses the telepathic abilities required to keep up.

And this is where confusion sets in, offence is taken, or we have to explain ourselves, which, frankly, is bloody annoying.

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“Now Now”

Take the chronological gymnastics of “now now.”

To the untrained ear, this sounds like something is happening immediately. Perhaps even urgently.

Um… No.

In South Africa, “now now” could mean in five minutes, in an hour, later today, or possibly tomorrow.

It depends entirely on the person, the situation, and whether whatever needs doing is sufficiently irritating to warrant immediate attention.

“Just Now”

Then there’s “just now.”

This one is particularly confusing to foreigners, because surely just now means a short time ago?

Not here, sunshine.

“Just now” could mean five minutes ago, five minutes from now, yesterday, or at some vague, indeterminate point in the near future.

Context is everything. And even with context, there are no guarantees.

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Then we have our emotional spectrum, which spans everything from tender sympathy to pure, unadulterated exasperation.

“Shame.”

This is not necessarily an expression of sympathy.

It can mean something is adorable, heartbreaking, embarrassing, ridiculous, or so spectacularly stupid that all you can do is shake your head and say, “Ag, shame.”

“Ag, shame.”

Add “ag” and the meaning becomes even more complicated.

It can be genuine compassion, affectionate amusement, mild irritation, or the verbal equivalent of patting someone on the head while wondering how they managed to survive this long in the wild.

“Ag nee man.” (roughly pronounced “akh nee mun”; the “g” has a throaty sound).

The absolute universal surrender to sheer human incompetence.

It’s the sound of a person whose soul has just been tested.

A child spills juice on clean linen? Ag nee man.

Someone leaves a shopping trolley wedged behind your car? Ag nee man.

It isn’t fiery anger. It is pure, weary exasperation at humanity’s persistent inability to get its act together.

“Is it?” (pronounced Izzit)

This is not a question. It is rarely an inquiry.

Sometimes it’s disbelief. Sometimes it’s sarcasm.

Most often, it’s a polite way of saying: “I don’t believe a single word coming out of your face, but please continue. This is entertaining.”

“Yoh!”

A word that can convey shock, exhaustion, disbelief, admiration, alarm, or the sudden realisation that your day has taken a turn for the spectacularly ridiculous.

The tone does most of the work. The eyebrows handle the rest.

“Sho!” (or “Shjoe!” or “Shoooo”) (roughly pronounced “shoe”; draw out the vowel in “shoooo” for extra drama)

The phonetic sound of all air leaving the body when the universe has decided to push you.

It is forty degrees outside? Sho.

You just narrowly dodged an oncoming minibus taxi? Shjoe.

Someone just dropped jaw-dropping, filthy gossip about the neighbours? Shooooo.

It is the linguistic equivalent of wiping sweat off your brow and wondering why you bothered getting out of bed.

“Haibo!” (roughly “high-boh”, with the second syllable rhyming with “or” in some South African pronunciations).

When ordinary shock simply will not do. Haibo is scandal.

It is the verbal reflex when someone has crossed a line so aggressively that your ancestors felt the breeze.

If someone cuts you off in traffic, that’s a yoh. If they steal your parking spot while making direct eye contact? Haibo.

“Eish.” (pronounced ay-sh)

This is practically a complete emotional support system packed into four letters.

• Disappointment? Eish.
• Bad news? Eish.
• Someone has done something so foolish that you don’t even know where to begin? Eish, my friend. Eish.

“Shame, man.”

Depending on delivery, this can mean

• “I feel sorry for you,”
• “that’s adorable,”
• “you poor thing,” or
• “you absolute muppet.”

Sometimes it means all four simultaneously.

“A proper kopseer.” (or “cap sore” if you’re speaking phonetically. For pronunciation purposes, seer rhymes with near)

Literally a sore head, but in practical terms, it is rarely medical.

A kopseer is administrative agony.

It is a problem so tedious, so convoluted, or caused by someone so profoundly thick that thinking about it physically hurts your frontal lobe.

• Bureaucracy is a kopseer.
• Incompetent colleagues are a kopseer.
• Dealing with a municipal billing department is a guaranteed route to a double Disprin.

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Then we move into our conflict resolution strategies, which are essentially verbal landmines disguised as casual conversation.

“To tune.”

Nothing to do with musical instruments or adjusting an engine.

To a South African, hearing “Let me tune you something” means: sit down, shut up, and prepare yourself for an unvarnished lecture, because you are about to be told the absolute truth whether your delicate feelings are ready for it or not.

“I’m gonna tune you now” means you have pushed your luck and are approximately three seconds away from a verbal hiding.

“Don’t tune me grief” means cease speaking immediately, do not attempt an excuse, and do not test my patience today because I am already at capacity.

And finally, the most dangerous phrase in the entire Southern Hemisphere:

“Listen here, my friend.”

Rule number one of South African engagement: the exact second someone begins a sentence with “Listen here, my friend,” you are in mortal danger.

You are not their friend.

You have never been their friend.

In fact, friendship has just been retroactively revoked for the last six generations.

It is the linguistic equivalent of a dog showing its teeth before lunging at the fence.

It means: I am not your friend, and the time for listening has long since passed.

Negotiations have officially collapsed, your excuses are irrelevant, and you are about to receive an unvarnished, devastating verbal dismantling.

If you hear that tone directed at you in a corridor or a car park, there are only two sensible options: apologise immediately, or sprint.

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Yet despite our violent conversational hazards, we remain eternal optimists.

“I’ll make a plan.”

This sounds reassuring.

Competent, even.

A solution will be found. The problem will be handled.

How? Nobody knows.

When? Also unclear.

Will the solution involve a length of wire, three cable ties, a borrowed ladder, someone’s cousin, and a degree of improvisation that would give a health and safety inspector an aneurysm?

Entirely possible.

But a plan will be made.

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We’ve even built an entire operating system out of pure contradiction:

• “Ja, no.”
  Can mean no, yes, perhaps, absolutely not, or “I agree with you, but I need you to know that you’re still wrong.”
• “No, ja.”
  Almost exactly the same thing, except now you’ve reversed the words and altered the emotional weather of the room. It translates roughly to: “I was ready to fight you on principle, but you’ve accidentally stumbled upon a valid point.”
• “Ja, ja, no.”
  I have listened to your proposal, I have processed the words coming out of your mouth, and there is not a snowball’s chance in hell.
• “No, no, ja.”
  The slow, grudging admission that a terrible idea might actually work.
  It isn’t indecisiveness. It’s an entire parliamentary debate concluded in three syllables.

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And if you survive all of that, try navigating the streets.

Tell a foreigner to “turn right at the second robot” and watch sheer panic set in.

They are frantically scanning the pavement for a shiny metal cyborg directing traffic with mechanical arms, while you are simply waiting for three coloured lights that may or may not have electricity to turn green.

“It’s lekker.”

Something can be lovely, delicious, enjoyable, excellent, or just generally good, and all of it can be communicated with one word.

And in my opinion, this is extremely efficient. We should be charging royalties for this level of linguistic innovation.

Now imagine trying to learn English from a South African.

You’d be forgiven for thinking we’d all attended a secret meeting where we agreed to make a perfectly good language as confusing as humanly possible.

And the truly remarkable part is that we understand one another perfectly well.

We know when “now now” means soon, when “just now” means eventually, when a “kopseer” requires a glass of wine instead of a tablet, and when “ag, shame” is sympathy rather than a devastating character assessment.

Mostly…

But as long as there’s a braai with a lekker chop, we will figure it out.

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