English Spoken Language

No other country has as many official languages as South Africa, it has 11 and they are: Afrikaans, English, Xhosa, Zulu, Swati, Sotho, Tswana, Tsonga, Northern Sotho, Southern Ndebele and Venda. “According to census data from 2011, Zulu is the most widely spoken language in the country with 11.6 million speakers. This is followed by Xhosa with 8.15 million speakers, and Afrikaans with 6.85 million speakers. English is some distance away with 4.9 million speakers”. Although it is not the most widely spoken language in the nation, it has a great role within the country itself, being designed as a Lingua Franca and, just as in the rest of the world, it is characterized by being a business and educational language since it is mostly used in

Language is always changing, it is imperfect, and it needs to be adapted to the historical period in which we live, to social background, we must take into account for whom we are communicating (whether we should communicate formally or informally), the way we use certain words and much more. However, there are 18th century syntagmatic appropriations that still persevere in modern day society of South Africa, and for that there are some examples, words such as “kloof” (/ kluːf/) that is the same as a mountain pass; “dagga” (/ˈdaxə/), which is a local name for marijuana; “boer”(/ˈbəʊə), a word used to describe the descendants of Dutch people who went to live in South Africa; “klaal” (/krɑːl/) which is the same as a conventional African suburb of huts frequently confined by a fence; “quagga” (/ˈkwaɡə/) that is a Zebra extinguished since 1883 who had a peculiarity to have half of the body in a brownish tone. In contrast to others there is “kaffir” (/ˈkafə/) that is a word attributed to people of color in South Africa and “hottentot” (/ˈhɒt(ə)ntɒt/) which is a name as well, but this one is addressed to the Khoi people with the aim of insulting their language in a certain way are nowadays considered intensely outrageous and they are not used