When I worked in Ireland back in ’08, there was one chef who would rag on me for calling traffic lights “robots”.
He thought it was the funniest thing ever, but it had never really occurred to me to think of where this random South Africanism originated from.
We went to investigate, and here’s what different sources told us:
They actually say before traffic lights were there in South Africa, the police used to control traffic with their hands in busy intersections as they still do at times. When the traffic controllers (the police) were replaced it sort of created an impression that a human job was replaced with a machine and hence the name robot.
[robot] Besides the standard meaning, in South Africa this is also used for traffic lights. The etymology of the word derives from a description of early traffic lights as robot policemen, which then got truncated with time.
And we’re not the only country to call them by such a name. The Democratic Republic of Congo has a real intelligent robot controlling their traffic:
But there are few others South Africanisms you might be interested to know the origins of.
Since we live in a country that has a melting pot of cultural influences, languages have been mixed and mingled to give us these gems, thanks to Oxford Dictionary:
bakkie
Afrikaans, from bak ‘container’ + the diminutive suffix -ie.
bergie
(informal) refers to a particular subculture of vagrants in Cape Town (from Afrikaans berg (mountain), originally referring to vagrants who sheltered in the forests of Table Mountain). Increasingly used in other cities to mean a vagrant of any description.
biltong
Afrikaans, from Dutch bil ‘buttock’ + tong ‘tongue’.
brinjal
Based on Portuguese berinjela, from Arabic al-bāḏinjān. South African, Indian.
dagga
Late 17th century: from Afrikaans, from Khoikhoi dachab.
kugel
member of a subgroup of wealthy middle-aged white English-speaking females in the northern suburbs of Johannesburg. Derived from kugel, a traditional Ashkenazi Jewish dish.
main road
what is generally called a “High Street” in Britain or a “Main Street” in North America
shabeen
Late 18th century: from Anglo-Irish síbín, from séibe ‘mugful’. (especially in Ireland, Scotland, and South Africa) an unlicensed establishment or private house selling alcohol and typically regarded as slightly disreputable.
shongololo, songololo
millipede (from Zulu and Xhosa, ukushonga, to roll up)
I bet you feel a whole lot more South African now, don’t you?
[source: quartz]
