South African English

I am fine as well if anyone would like to know! Did y'all know that most people in Kenya speak about 4 languages? Dutch, English, Affrican, and their own mother tounge. At least thats what someone said to me.

I am an afrikaans south african living in america.
Cape Town is semi-english but ALL the towns next to it, including Stellenbosch are 90 % Afrikaans. Stellenbosch is the cradle of the Afrikaans language and a great spot to drink alot of wine. French settlers introduced wine to the country in the 1700's.
North of Johannesburg is Pretoria. Pretoria and surrounding areas have about 500,000 native Afrikaans speakers. Pretoria is way better than Joburg and also the entry point to the Bushveld. Bushveld being the area where most of the game in the country resides including the awesome Kruger National Park. It's Big 5 country, elephant, lion, cheetah,rhino and Buffulo.
People from english speaking countries think I sound Australian. Americans who have been to the Nederlands or Germany think I'm from Germany.
Afrikaner and Boer is not neccesarily interchangeable. It is a hotly debated issue. My opinion is that Afrikaners are people of any race from anywhere that speak Afrikaans. 'Boer' is the term used by the 2 independant republics (Oranje Vrystaat and the Zuid Afrikaanse Republiek) in the northern part of the country. These people trekked north after the English came to the Cape in the 1800's. They fought 2 wars against the British. Including the 2nd Boer War (over control of Gold in Joburg).

On the subject of Afrikaans. What was said previously is mostly true. However Afrikaans is one of the 11 official languages(yes 11). It is used as medium in schools and universities and as language on television including one sattelite channel dedicated to it. Anything concerned with Rugby is in Afrikaans as Rugby has taken over as religion:)

NS Boer means farmer.
check out: www.news24.co.za

On the numbers front, according to the last census the first language distributions were:
1. Xhosa(approx 5mil)
2. Zulu(approx 5mil)
3. Afrikaans(3.5 mil)
4. English(1.5 mil)
etc
Everyone's 2nd language is english as are all the road signs and it is the language used in commerce.

Namibia has about 100,000 1st language Afrikaans speakers (black and white). Some people still speak German(Deutsch) but not many.

Zimbabwe does not have a lot of whites left in the country due to the policies of Robert Mugabe.

The heritage of the whites in SA are mostly British, Irish, Dutch, French and German but there is also big Jewish and Portuguese communities and smaller Greek and Italian communities. The Portuguese went to SA when war broke out in Angola and Mosambique in the 70's.