Cape Town Slang and Expressions Explained

Most of the words visitors collect in Cape Town are national South African English. A few belong to the Cape, and they come out of Kaaps, a language variety with four centuries behind it. Here is what the words mean, where they came from and who uses them.

The short answer

Cape Town speech is layered rather than exotic. A large part of it is South African English used from Musina to Muizenberg: robot, lekker, howzit, shame, is it, eina. A second layer comes straight out of Afrikaans, including mos and jol. A third belongs to Kaaps, the language variety of the Cape Flats, which scholars date to the 1500s and 1600s and which is not broken Afrikaans. A fourth comes from isiXhosa and from tsotsitaal, the urban register that gave South African English eish.

What Kaaps is: a variety formed at the Cape from the 1500s onwards through contact between indigenous African, South-East Asian, Dutch, Portuguese and English speakers, taught in madrassahs and first written in Arabic script
Where scholars differ: Frank Hendricks places Kaaps within the Southwestern Afrikaans dialect group, while Quentin Williams of UWC argues for recognition as a language in its own right
First dictionary: the trilingual Kaaps Woordeboek was launched at the Castle of Good Hope on 23 April 2026
Oldest word on this page: eina, first recorded in English in 1913 and possibly from Khoikhoi or Nama interjections
Most travelled word: china, from Cockney rhyming slang china plate, with South African citations from 1972 to 2023
Handle with care: skollie, which the Dictionary of South African English still defines in explicitly racial terms
Scope: most of these words are national South African English, and only a few are particular to the Cape

Start with Kaaps, not with a word list

The most Cape Town thing about Cape Town speech is not a single word. It is Kaaps, the variety spoken across the Cape Flats and well beyond it. Writing in The Conversation in 2021, the UWC sociolinguist Quentin Williams and his colleagues describe a language created in settler colonial South Africa and developed by the 1500s, out of encounters between indigenous African, South-East Asian, Dutch, Portuguese and English speakers. It was first taught in madrassahs and first written in Arabic script, which is a very different origin story from the one most South Africans were taught at school.

Scholars do not agree on what to call it. Frank Hendricks, in Multilingual Margins, sets Kaaps within the Southwestern Afrikaans dialect group and traces it to seventeenth-century slave influence on the formation of Afrikaans, describing it today as a sociolect of the Cape Peninsula working class. Williams argues for recognition as a language in its own right, and led the trilingual Kaaps Woordeboek that launched at the Castle of Good Hope in April 2026. A UWC study of Paarl-Kaaps published in July 2025 makes a further point worth holding on to: Kaaps is not confined to the Cape Flats, and there are speakers in Paarl, the Swartland and the Boland.

What everybody working on it agrees about is the negative. Kaaps is not broken Afrikaans, and it is not a comic accent. It was pushed down the scale by standardisation and then by apartheid, and the scholarship of the past fifteen years has been about undoing that. Our page on /en/cape-town-explained/language-history/ goes into the Arabic-Afrikaans manuscripts and the mission schools in more detail.

The national layer

A good deal of what gets sold as Cape Town slang is simply South African English. The Dictionary of South African English, compiled at Rhodes University, is the place to check, and it is blunt about how national most of this vocabulary is.

Howzit is a contraction of how is it, working as both greeting and enquiry. Shame is an expression of sympathy or of fondness, often in the phrase ag shame, and often ironic. Is it, calqued on the Afrikaans is dit, is the all-purpose acknowledgement. A 1972 note in the Star teased that you could "carry on a conversation quite easily by using only four words", and listed shame, hey and is it among them.

Then there is the everyday furniture. Bakkie, from Afrikaans bak plus a diminutive, is a light truck, cited from 1893. Braai, short for braaivleis, is the fire and the gathering both. Takkie, or tackie, is a canvas or sports shoe, recorded in 1913 by C. Pettman, with an etymology the dictionary leaves open between English tacky, meaning sticky, and a Scottish dialect word for cheap and rubbishy. Eina is the cry of pain, and its possible Khoikhoi and Nama roots make it one of the oldest strands in the language.

None of these is a Cape Town word. Using them will mark you as South African, not as a Capetonian.

Afrikaans in the mouth of English

The second layer is Afrikaans vocabulary that has settled inside South African English so comfortably that most speakers no longer register it as a borrowing. Lekker is the obvious one. Mos is the quieter one: a small emphatic particle meaning after all or of course, which the dictionary traces to West Flemish mos, a form of Dutch immers, with an English citation as early as 1900. Ja-nee, literally yes-no, does the work of a shrug.

Jol is where the Cape comes into view. The dictionary derives it from Afrikaans for dance or party, and notes that the South African English pronunciation reflects either the Afrikaans accent of working-class Cape Coloured communities or an Englished version of the word. Its earliest citation, from 1957, is Alex La Guma, the District Six writer. The word travelled nationally; the accent behind it did not start in Johannesburg.

Kaaps and Cape Flats usage

This is the layer that is genuinely local, and also the one where the sourcing is thinnest, because until this year there was no dictionary of Kaaps to check against. Aweh, the greeting, is a good example: the best evidence we could find is a single remark by Williams in a UWC news item, which is why we have it on this page but flagged. Kwaai, which can mean fierce and can mean excellent, is thoroughly at home in Kaaps, though the dictionary does not credit Kaaps with the approving sense.

Several words that visitors associate with the Cape Flats, among them gees, dala, duidelik, jas and salute, have no entry in the Dictionary of South African English and no scholarly treatment that we could open. We have left them out rather than invent an origin for them. The Kaaps Woordeboek is now the place to look, and news coverage of the launch mentions djy, biesim and klimeid among the words it records. It also uses the Khoi name Huri‡oaxa rather than Table Mountain, which tells you something about the project's intent.

Words from isiXhosa and other African languages

Cape Town is a Xhosa city as well as an Afrikaans and English one, and isiXhosa shapes daily speech, especially in the townships and on public transport. The clearest documented crossover into South African English is eish, the interjection covering displeasure, surprise, resignation and outrage. The dictionary derives it from tsotsitaal and dates the first English citation to the Sunday Independent in September 1998.

Terms of address travel in both directions. Bra, meaning mate, is given as a shortened form of English brother, with the bl- variants explained by the regular shift of r to l when English words are used in Nguni languages. Its citations run from Drum in 1956. Bru, by contrast, is a shortening of the Afrikaans broer, first cited in 1989. Two words that sound almost identical, from two different languages.

On a taxi you will hear all of this at once, along with the working vocabulary described in /en/cape-town-explained/taxi-language/ and in our longer piece on the minibus taxi system.

Youth and street registers

Slang is generational everywhere, and the dictionary sometimes says so outright. Lank, meaning plenty of or very, is labelled slang and marked as used especially by schoolchildren and young adults, with citations from 1970 to 1993 and an etymology the dictionary admits it does not know. Tjommie, which the dictionary files as chommie, is an Afrikaans adaptation of English chummy, cited from 1946.

Tsotsitaal is the register that deserves the most care. It is an urban South African way of speaking, associated historically with township and street life, and it is the acknowledged source of eish. Words are often traced to prison registers such as Sabela in popular accounts. We have not repeated any of those claims here, because the specialist literature we could open does not make them for the specific words on this page.

Words that carry history

Skollie is the hardest word on this list. The Dictionary of South African English defines it as a Coloured street hoodlum or petty criminal, often a gang member, with a transferred sense of any thug. The definition is worth reading twice: a reference work still carries the racial marker in the gloss itself. Its citations start in the Cape Argus in 1934 and include a 1950 line placing skollies in District Six, a neighbourhood whose residents were later forcibly removed.

That is the point. The word was applied to a community before it was adopted by anyone within it, and it sits inside a history of policing, removals and racial classification. Coloured, the category the dictionary uses, is itself contested, and some people it was applied to reject it. None of this makes the word unusable in Cape Town, where it is used lightly among friends as often as not. It does make it a bad word for a visitor to try out.

Using any of this

The useful rule is small. Learn what the words mean so that you understand what is said to you. Do not perform an accent that is not yours, and do not treat a working-class Cape Town variety as a costume. If you want to go further, the Kaaps Woordeboek is the book to buy, and it was made by the people who speak the language.

Timeline

1500s and 1600s Kaaps takes shape at the Cape through contact between indigenous African, South-East Asian and European speakers
1900 mos appears in the Dictionary of South African English's earliest English citation
1913 eina and tackie are both recorded in C. Pettman's Africanderisms
1934 the Cape Argus uses skolly of Cape Peninsula street crime
1957 jol appears in print in a story by the District Six writer Alex La Guma
1998 eish enters the dictionary record, derived from tsotsitaal
2026 the trilingual Kaaps Woordeboek is launched at the Castle of Good Hope

Did you know?

The first recorded English use of lekker, in 1847, was about hippopotamus.

Lekker is Afrikaans and Dutch for delicious, and it now covers anything good. The Dictionary of South African English dates its first English citation to 1847, about hippo hoof.

Lekker started on the plate. The Dictionary of South African English gives its first English citation as 1847, in a memoir by John Barrow that glosses the word while discussing how lekker, meaning delicious, hippopotamus hoof was. From food it spread to cover anything pleasant, then picked up further senses: pleasantly tipsy, sweet water fit to drink, and an adverb meaning well or very. Since at least 1983 the dictionary records the slogan local is lekker, used to talk up South African products and achievements. It is a national word rather than a Cape Town one, used from Cape Town to Musina, and it is one of the clearest examples of Afrikaans vocabulary sitting comfortably inside South African English without anyone treating it as a foreign borrowing.

Language & Slang South Africa 1847 South Africa-wide

Source: Dictionary of South African English: lekker · Cape Town Magazine: Your Guide to Cape Town Slang

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Did you know?

Eina, the South African cry of pain, may be one of the oldest words in the local English vocabulary.

The Dictionary of South African English gives eina as Afrikaans, perhaps from Khoikhoi interjections of pain and surprise, or from a Nama interjection. The first English citation is 1913.

Stub your toe anywhere in South Africa and you will hear it. The Dictionary of South African English lists eina as interjection, noun and adjective: the cry, the pain itself, and painful. The etymology note is unusually rich. It gives the word as Afrikaans, and then offers Khoikhoi interjections, one of pain and one of surprise, or a Nama interjection, as possible sources. The earliest English citation is C. Pettman's Africanderisms of 1913, which describes an exclamation of pain common in the Midlands and spells out the clicks in the underlying Khoi words. A 1934 source notes that it was already very common in South Africa even among English-speaking children. This is national South African English, not a Cape word, but it is a reminder that the oldest layer of the vocabulary is Khoi and San, not Dutch.

Language & Slang South Africa 1913 South Africa-wide

Source: Dictionary of South African English: eina

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Did you know?

Calling a friend my china is Cockney rhyming slang that made it to South Africa and stayed.

The Dictionary of South African English derives china, meaning mate, from the Cockney rhyming slang china plate. South African citations run from 1972 to 2023.

China means mate, pal, friend, and turns up most often as my china. The Dictionary of South African English labels it colloquial, notes that it is also British English, and gives the derivation without hedging: Cockney rhyming slang, china plate for mate. The rhyme has been invisible for so long that almost nobody using the word in South Africa is aware of it. The citation range is one of the longest on this page, from a 1972 broadcast on Radio South Africa to a 2023 line in the Daily Maverick that runs howzit, my china, unjani, mfowethu, three languages in six words. That last citation is the real point. The word arrived from London, settled into South African English, and now sits comfortably next to isiXhosa and isiZulu terms of address in the same greeting. It is national usage and not a Cape Town word.

Language & Slang South Africa 1972 South Africa-wide

Source: Dictionary of South African English: china

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Did you know?

Eish does the work of a whole sentence, and the dictionary traces it to tsotsitaal.

The Dictionary of South African English gives eish as an interjection covering displeasure, surprise, wonder, resignation and outrage, derived from tsotsitaal, with the first English citation in the Sunday Independent in September 1998.

Eish is the sound of South African exasperation, and the range the dictionary gives it is remarkable for a single syllable: displeasure, surprise, wonder, resignation and outrage. Which one you mean is carried entirely by the delivery. The Dictionary of South African English labels it colloquial, records the variants aish and heish, and derives it from tsotsitaal, the urban register associated with township and street life. The earliest English citation is from the Sunday Independent of 27 September 1998, and the entry follows it through Grocott's Mail, Bona and the Sowetan to 2017. That is a fast journey from street register to national newspaper vocabulary in under twenty years. It is used everywhere in South Africa including Cape Town, and it is not a Cape word. It is also the clearest documented case on this page of tsotsitaal feeding directly into everyday South African English.

Language & Slang South Africa 1998 South Africa-wide

Source: Dictionary of South African English: eish

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Did you know?

Kwaai can mean fierce, or excellent.

From the Dutch and Afrikaans kwaad, meaning bad or angry, kwaai described a fierce animal or a cross person. The Dictionary of South African English records an approving sense from 1974, and both senses are current.

The Dictionary of South African English traces kwaai to kwaad, the Dutch and earlier South African Dutch word for bad or evil, and its early English citations are unambiguous: an 1827 passage from G. Thompson, a later line about rough kwaai months at sea. Then a second sense arrives. From 1974 the dictionary records kwaai as a term of approval, equivalent to great or fantastic. The second sense does not retire the first: the entry carries fierce citations into the late 1980s and approving ones alongside them, with no marker saying either has fallen out of use. That kind of doubling is common in slang, and it usually happens in young, urban, multilingual speech. In Cape Town kwaai is thoroughly at home in Kaaps, the language of the Cape Flats. Those shoes are kwaai is a compliment. A kwaai dog is still something to avoid.

Language & Slang Cape Flats Especially common in Cape Town

Source: Dictionary of South African English: kwaai · Cape Town Magazine: Your Guide to Cape Town Slang

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Did you know?

Jol went national, but the dictionary traces its English pronunciation to working-class Cape speech.

Jol means a party or a good time. The Dictionary of South African English derives it from Afrikaans and says the South African English pronunciation reflects either the Afrikaans accent of working-class Cape Coloured communities or an Englished form.

Jol is a party, a good time, a dance, a concert, and as a verb the act of enjoying any of them. The Dictionary of South African English labels it slang and derives it from Afrikaans, and its etymology note does something most entries do not: it locates the English pronunciation, saying it comes either from the Afrikaans accent of working-class Cape Coloured communities or from an Englished version of the word. The earliest citation, from 1957, is Alex La Guma, the writer from District Six. Later senses in the entry stretch to a joke, a stunt, and a self-indulgent trip. The word is used everywhere in South Africa now, which is the usual fate of Cape vocabulary, and it is worth knowing that a piece of national slang carries a Cape accent inside its etymology. Coloured is the dictionary's own term and it is a contested one.

Language & Slang Cape Town 1957 South Africa-wide

Source: Dictionary of South African English: jol

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Did you know?

South Africans call a traffic light a robot, and it is not a joke about the future.

"Robot" is standard South African English for a traffic light, recorded in the Dictionary of South African English. It is used nationally, not just in Cape Town.

Ask for directions in Cape Town and you will be told to turn at the second robot. The Dictionary of South African English lists robot as the ordinary South African word for automatic traffic lights, with citations from 1930 onwards, including a 1948 note by H.V. Morton that the usage was long discontinued in England. That is the point worth making: the word was current in British English too, and South Africa simply never stopped using it. The dictionary traces it back to the Czech robota, forced labour, by way of Karel Capek's 1920 play. Visitors tend to file it under charming local colour. It is better understood as a piece of English that stayed put on one side of the world while it went out of fashion on the other. It is national usage, so do not sell it as a Cape Town word.

Language & Slang South Africa South Africa-wide

Source: Dictionary of South African English: robot · Wikipedia: List of South African English regionalisms

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Did you know?

Bru and bra sound like the same word. One is Afrikaans, the other is English through isiXhosa and isiZulu.

The Dictionary of South African English derives bru from the Afrikaans broer and bra from English brother, explaining the bl- variants of bra by the regular shift of r to l when English words are used in Nguni languages.

Two near-identical words for friend, from two different languages, and the dictionary keeps them apart. Bru is a shortened form of the Afrikaans broer, brother, labelled colloquial, with the earliest citation from Fair Lady in October 1989 and citations running to 2017. Bra is a shortened form of the English brother, and its etymology note explains the bl- variants by the regular phonetic shift of r to l when English words are taken into Nguni languages. It carries five senses, from a title used with a name to a street-wise urban figure, and its earliest citation is Drum in 1956, referring to the writer Can Themba. Bra belongs to township English and bru to Afrikaans-influenced speech, which in Cape Town means you will hear both, sometimes from the same person in the same conversation. Neither is a Cape Town word on its own.

Language & Slang South Africa 1956 South Africa-wide

Source: Dictionary of South African English: bru · Dictionary of South African English: bra

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Did you know?

A newspaper once claimed you could hold a South African conversation with about four words.

The Dictionary of South African English quotes a 1972 Star piece saying a conversation could be carried on with only four words, among them shame and is it. Shame expresses sympathy or fondness; is it is calqued on the Afrikaans is dit.

Two words do an enormous amount of conversational work in South Africa, and the Dictionary of South African English records both. Shame is an expression of sympathy or pity, and also of pleasure at something small or endearing, often as ag shame and often ironically. The dictionary gives it as a special sense of general English shame, perhaps influenced by Afrikaans expressions of sympathy, with citations from 1932 to 1993. Is it is the all-purpose acknowledgement, meaning really or is that so, and the dictionary calls it a calque on the Afrikaans is dit. Its citations run from 1970 to 1987. Both entries carry the same 1972 line from the Star, which teased that a South African could "carry on a conversation quite easily by using only four words" and listed shame, hey and is it among them. Both are national usage, and neither belongs to Cape Town in particular.

Language & Slang South Africa 1972 South Africa-wide

Source: Dictionary of South African English: shame · Dictionary of South African English: is it

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Did you know?

"Just now" often means later. "Now-now" usually means much sooner.

In South African English, "just now" means after a while and "now-now" means in a moment, or a moment ago. The Dictionary of South African English records both, and both are national usage.

The Dictionary of South African English gives "just now" as in a while, presently, by and by, and notes it is in constant use across the country. "Now-now" it gives as either a moment ago or in a moment, depending on the direction of travel. One citation from 1990 lays the scale out neatly: now means soon, now now means in a few minutes, now now now means actually now, and just now means later. Visitors find this maddening and locals find the confusion funny, but it is a real system, not sloppiness, and the speaker usually knows exactly which rung they are on. It is South African English rather than a Cape Town speciality, so if someone tells you they will be there just now, settle in.

Language & Slang South Africa South Africa-wide

Source: Dictionary of South African English: just now · Dictionary of South African English: now-now

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Did you know?

Mos is the smallest word in the room and it changes the whole sentence.

Mos is an Afrikaans-derived particle meaning after all, of course or you know, dropped into a sentence for emphasis. The Dictionary of South African English traces it to West Flemish mos and cites it in English from 1900.

You hear it constantly in Cape Town and it is almost impossible to translate cleanly. Mos is an adverb, labelled colloquial, that slides into a sentence to mean after all, of course, or you know perfectly well. The Dictionary of South African English derives it from Afrikaans, and behind that from West Flemish mos, a form of the Dutch immers, meaning but, yet or indeed. Its earliest English citation is from 1900. The dictionary sets out several positions it can take: interpolated for emphasis, in front of an adjective to mean really or actually, before a verb to mean truly, and after a verb to mean only or just. That last one is the trap for newcomers, because the same three letters can strengthen or soften depending on where they land. It is Afrikaans-derived South African English rather than a Cape Town speciality, but it is very thick on the ground in Cape speech.

Language & Slang South Africa 1900 South Africa-wide

Source: Dictionary of South African English: mos

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Did you know?

Howzit is a greeting and a question at once, which is why nobody is sure whether to answer it.

The Dictionary of South African English gives howzit as a contraction of how is it, equivalent to hello but also carrying the enquiry how are you. Its citations run from 1975 to 1992.

Howzit is the standard South African hello, and the dictionary is careful to say it is doing two jobs at once: a salutation equivalent to hello, but also containing the question how are you. That ambiguity is why visitors hesitate over whether a reply is expected. Usually it is not, or only a howzit back. The Dictionary of South African English labels it colloquial, gives the derivation as a contraction of how is it, and notes that the forms reflect pronunciations influenced by Afrikaans and by Bantu languages. Its earliest citation is from the magazine Darling in January 1975, greeting cherries and okes. The entry also records a second use, howzit for or howzit with, meaning how about, used to suggest or request something. It is national South African English, used in Cape Town as everywhere else, and it is one of the few slang words here that is safe for anyone to use.

Language & Slang South Africa 1975 South Africa-wide

Source: Dictionary of South African English: howzit

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Did you know?

Lank means plenty, and the dictionary admits it does not know where the word came from.

The Dictionary of South African English labels lank as slang used especially by schoolchildren and young adults, meaning plenty of, or good, or simply very. The etymology is given as unknown.

Lank is one of the rare entries where a dictionary says plainly that it does not know. The note reads that the etymology is unknown, and offers only that it is perhaps from the Afrikaans lank, meaning long in both time and proportion. The Dictionary of South African English gives three senses: as an adjective meaning plenty of, lots of or many; as an adjective meaning good, nice or fantastic; and as an adverb meaning very, as in lank cool. It labels the word slang and says it is used especially by schoolchildren and young adults, with informants recorded from 1970 to 1993 in places as far apart as Durban and Grahamstown. It is a youth register word rather than a regional one. In Cape Town it is very much alive, and it is the kind of word that shows why register labels matter as much as regional ones.

Language & Slang South Africa 1970 South Africa-wide

Source: Dictionary of South African English: lank

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Did you know?

Takkies are trainers, and the dictionary has two competing theories about the name and backs neither.

The Dictionary of South African English defines a tackie or takkie as a rubber-soled canvas shoe, and gives the origin as uncertain: possibly English tacky meaning sticky, possibly a Scottish dialect word meaning cheap and rubbishy.

Everyone in South Africa owns takkies and nobody can tell you where the word comes from. The Dictionary of South African English enters it as tackie, defines it as a rubber-soled canvas shoe and later any sports or running shoe, and sets out the uncertainty honestly: possibly from general English tacky, meaning sticky, and possibly from a Scottish English dialect tacky, meaning cheap or rubbishy. It adds that the takkie spelling reflects a perception that the word is Afrikaans, while tekkie and teckie reflect Afrikaans pronunciation, which is itself a small lesson in how spelling follows belief. The earliest citation is C. Pettman in 1913, describing rubber-soled sand-shoes in the border towns of the Eastern Province. The entry also carries the transferred sense of a tyre, the fat tackie, and the idiom tread tackie, to accelerate. National South African English, not a Cape word.

Language & Slang South Africa 1913 South Africa-wide

Source: Dictionary of South African English: tackie

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People, places and music

Frank Hendricks
Quentin Williams
Cape Flats The sandy plain east of central Cape Town where the apartheid state built the townships it moved people to, including Athlone, Manenberg, Gugulethu, Bonteheuwel, Hanover Park, Mitchells Plain and Khayelitsha. SAHO notes that the area has produced musicians from jazz to hip hop, alongside long unemployment and gang violence.
Cape Town The city whose music this graph is mostly about. Denis-Constant Martin's study treats it as a creole city where slavery, carnival, church music, dance bands and American jazz kept feeding each other. Apartheid then cut the city up, clearing District Six and pushing people out to the Cape Flats, and the music carries that history.
District Six The inner-city neighbourhood named in 1867 as the sixth municipal district, home to about 55,000 people before apartheid emptied it. It was declared a white area on 11 February 1966, and more than 60,000 people had been moved out to the Cape Flats by 1982. Basil Coetzee was born there and Taliep Petersen grew up there.
South Africa The country whose apartheid laws shape almost every link in this graph, from the Group Areas Act that emptied District Six to the 1963 act that made mixed bands illegal and sent the Blue Notes abroad.

Sources

Dictionary of South African English: skolly · Dictionary Unit for South African English · accessed 19 Sep 2026
Dictionary of South African English: jol · Dictionary Unit for South African English · accessed 19 Sep 2026
Dictionary of South African English: eina · Dictionary Unit for South African English · accessed 19 Sep 2026
Dictionary of South African English: mos · Dictionary Unit for South African English · accessed 19 Sep 2026
Dictionary of South African English: eish · Dictionary Unit for South African English · accessed 19 Sep 2026
Dictionary of South African English: bru · Dictionary Unit for South African English · accessed 19 Sep 2026
Dictionary of South African English: bra · Dictionary Unit for South African English · accessed 19 Sep 2026
Dictionary of South African English: china · Dictionary Unit for South African English · accessed 19 Sep 2026
Dictionary of South African English: howzit · Dictionary Unit for South African English · accessed 19 Sep 2026
Dictionary of South African English: shame · Dictionary Unit for South African English · accessed 19 Sep 2026
Dictionary of South African English: is it · Dictionary Unit for South African English · accessed 19 Sep 2026
Dictionary of South African English: lank · Dictionary Unit for South African English · accessed 19 Sep 2026
Dictionary of South African English: tackie · Dictionary Unit for South African English · accessed 19 Sep 2026
Dictionary of South African English: chommie · Dictionary Unit for South African English · accessed 19 Sep 2026
Dictionary of South African English: bakkie · Dictionary Unit for South African English · accessed 19 Sep 2026
Dictionary of South African English: braai · Dictionary Unit for South African English · accessed 19 Sep 2026
Dictionary of South African English: ja-nee · Dictionary Unit for South African English · accessed 19 Sep 2026
The nature and context of Kaaps: a contemporary, past and future perspective · Multilingual Margins, via UWC Scholar · accessed 19 Sep 2026
The first-ever dictionary of South Africa's Kaaps language has launched, why it matters · The Conversation · accessed 19 Sep 2026
Groundbreaking study reveals Paarl-Kaaps' hidden linguistic power · University of the Western Cape · accessed 19 Sep 2026
Kaaps language gains formal recognition with the launch of its first dictionary · Cape Towner · accessed 19 Sep 2026