How to Bluff your way at being South African

I was in South Africa - my home country - last week (hence the lack of posts on Broadstuff). Now, as many of our readers may be aware, there is a small matter of the World Cup in South Africa at the moment. No doubt by now you are inspired by the undoubted current and future (all we have to do is beat France 4-0*....) success of our national team (Bafana Bafana - The Boys! The Boys!) to find their inner South African.

So, here are 10 points that you should memorise so that people will think you are the "Real Thing"

1. Flat Vowels (or Vaals, as we would pronounce it). No self respecting South African will ever use more than one vowel sound to join two consonants, no matter how many letters the word has. And of course if we can dispense with the vowel altogether, even better. So, Yu paak yor cah in the grudge.

2. Rrrrolll Yourrrr Rrrs - you know that Arrrrrr pirate sound you make once a year - well we do it everrry time that a worrrd has an rrr.

3. The glottal acceleration - many of the African languages have clicks etc, we don't use 'em in SA English, but do pronounce some words starting with vowels as if your breath was a sprinter coming out the blocks.

4. Yes is always "Ja" pronounced "Yah", except when its "Yebo".

5. No South African does things "in a minute", or "presently". Everything is done "just now". And we mean everything, except of course the things we will do "now now".

6. In SA to say you could "murder a Bagel" will bring understanding nods - Bagel is the word for a particularly irritating species, the male equivalent of the Jewish Princess, except being Jewish is totally optional. The female equivalent is a Kugel.

7. Being the "Rainbow Nation" there are naturally terms of endearment that the races use for one another - as an interesting experiment you could try randomly calling various fans of the beautiful game "kaffirs", "Klonkies", "goffels", "rockspiders", "rooineks" and see whose face lights up in delight at the realisation that you are "tuning them grief" and thus an opportunity to give you a "snotklap" (look it up) has arisen

8. For going to the Soccer (we call it soccer, not football) matches.....

9 .....ensure you have your Makaraba (hard hat festooned with all the symbols of fandom), take your Vuvuzela (very noisy trumpet), tank up on Dop (booze) before the match and yell Laduma! when your team scores and Eish! (with glottal accelleration) when they hit the post 5 minutes before the end of a 1-1 game.

10. Conversation in the game (when you are not blowing your vuvuzela) can be started with your neighbour by using the all time favourites:

- "The Referee is Blind" translates roughly as "Daai Fokkin Blinne Referee".
- "That gentleman is playacting for a foul" is (roughly) "Fokkin Moffie/Moegoe/Mompara/Mompie"
- "By jove - the referee has handed the South African goalkeeper a red card for an accidental collision, thereby ensuring they lose the game" is untranslateable on family blogs like this....

As to the necessary technology content, SA emains an enigma lght years ahead in many sevices - easpecially mobile ones - yet basics like broadband access and wifi are a rarity

*Sadly France were only beaten by 2-1 by The Boys and Uruguay failed to do the gentlemanly thing and score 4-0 vs Mexico to put Bafana Bafana through. Still, thinking about Bafana Bafana stats - win, draw, loss vs the 9th, 13th and 12th best teams in world is not bad when you're ranked 83rd! And if that fokkin blinne referee hadn't given the red card.....