"District 9"

Hello everybody,

Yesterday I watched "Distirct 9" and I had some problems to understand their English. For example, They did not pronunce the "H".

So What do you think about the Eglish in South Africa?

Thank you.

I have known many people from SA, some being Afrikaners, and their brand of English is very unique. It sounds closest perhaps to Australian English but what I withget the most about it was the pronunciation of the /i/ sound in words like 'friendly'/'happily'/etc. It tended to be very forward and pronounced, like they were saying "friendleeeeeey"/"happileeeeeey".

Another thing was the /ai/ diphthong, as in 'fire'--they would pronounce it /a: r/ before a liquid ("/fa: r/ = fire") and like /{/ in other positions, so that 'life' sounded like a drawn out nasalised "laugh" ("/l{:f/ = life")

Very different from say British varieties of English. I can almost always spot the South African immediately from other English speakers.

I also find it pretty close to Australian English. I'd need to hear the two accents one after the other in order to tell them apart. District 9 was easy to understand for me, but I'm a native speaker. You just have to expose yourself to different accents to understand them, it doesn't take that long. Although, South African English isn't a variety that you hear very often.

Well, I thought it sounded different than Australian English... For instance, I don't think Australians pronounce the F-word as "fook", although I might be mistaken.