Available via license: CC BY 4.0
Content may be subject to copyright.
Lexikos 33 (AFRILEX-reeks/series 33: 2023): 24-40
African Englishes in the
Oxford English Dictionary
Danica Salazar, Oxford Languages, Oxford University Press,
Oxford, United Kingdom (danica.salazar@oup.com)
Abstract: In some of its recent quarterly updates, the Oxford English Dictionary has published
particularly large batches of new and revised entries from South African English, Nigerian English,
and East African English. The present article is a detailed discussion of the editorial work behind
these updates for African varieties of English, whose distinctive vocabularies the OED is currently
taking steps to cover more widely. The paper explains how words are selected for inclusion, how
new entries are researched and written, how new sources of textual evidence such as social media
give OED editors greater insight into African Englishes, and how the dictionary's African consult-
ants and users contribute to ensuring the accuracy and authenticity of the OED's definitions, ety-
mologies, pronunciations, and quotation evidence. The article also highlights a selection of African
words and phrases that have recently been added to or revised in the OED, all of which show the
many different forms of lexical innovation that shape the distinctive vocabularies of African Englishes.
Keywords: OXFORD ENGLISH DICTIONARY, HISTORICAL LEXICOGRAPHY, AFRICAN
ENGLISHES, EAST AFRICAN ENGLISH, SOUTH AFRICAN ENGLISH, WEST AFRICAN
ENGLISH, NIGERIAN ENGLISH
Opsomming: Afrika-Engels in die Oxford English Dictionary. In sommige van die
onlangse kwartaallikse bywerkings van die Oxford English Dictionary is besonder baie nuwe en her-
siene inskrywings uit Suid-Afrikaanse Engels, Nigeriese Engels en Oos-Afrikaanse Engels gepubli-
seer. Hierdie artikel is 'n gedetailleerde bespreking van die redaksionele werk agter hierdie bywer-
kings vir Afrika-variëteite van Engels waarvoor die OED tans poog om wyer dekking aan elkeen se
kenmerkende woordeskatte te verleen. Hier word uiteengesit hoe woorde vir insluiting geselekteer
word, hoe nuwe inskrywings nagevors en gedefinieer word, hoe nuwe bronne van tekstuele bewys
soos die sosiale media die OED-redakteurs groter insig in Afrika-Engels gee, en hoe die woorde-
boek se Afrika-adviseurs en -gebruikers daartoe bydra om die akkuraatheid en geloofwaardigheid
van die OED se definisies, etimologieë, uitspraakaanduidings en aanhalingsbewysmateriaal te verse-
ker. Die artikel plaas ook klem op 'n groep Afrika-woorde en -frases wat onlangs toegevoeg is tot of
hersien is in die OED, waarvan almal die verskillende vorme van leksikale vernuwing toon wat die
kenmerkende woordeskatte van Afrika-Engels vorm.
Sleutelwoorde: OXFORD ENGLISH DICTIONARY, HISTORIESE LEKSIKOGRAFIE, AFRIKA-
ENGELS, OOS-AFRIKAANSE ENGELS, SUID-AFRIKAANSE ENGELS, WES-AFRIKAANSE
ENGELS, NIGERIESE ENGELS
http://lexikos.journals.ac.za; https://doi.org/10.5788/33-1-1774 (Project)
25 Danica Salazar
1. Introduction
The English language has a long and complex history in Africa. It first reached
the shores of the continent's West Coast, where trade contact was established
with British merchants as early as in the 15th century. English gained a firmer
foothold in Africa with the arrival of British settlers in the early 19th century,
with these settlers and their descendants forming a significant population of
native English-speaking Africans (Van Rooy 2020). Finally, the colonization of
large swathes of African territory by the British beginning in the late 19th cen-
tury led to further entrenchment of English as an African language, to such a
degree that in the mid-20th century, when British colonies in Africa became
independent nations, these new states chose to continue using English, with
many of them even giving the language official status (Schmied 1991).
Today, English is seen in Africa as a prestige language, one that is associ-
ated with educational and professional success and upward social mobility. It
also serves a very useful role as a neutral lingua franca for the highly multilin-
gual, multi-ethnic, and multicultural communities that form part of modern
African countries. However, the violent, repressive, and exploitative imperial
history behind the spread of English in Africa is far from forgotten, and the
lasting hegemony of this colonial language is often decried as a threat to the
autonomous development of local languages and cultures. Its presence in
Africa resulted in the creation of an English-speaking elite and further deep-
ened inequalities between socioeconomic classes on the continent.
Despite its contradictory roles and the conflicting attitudes towards Eng-
lish in Africa, what is clear is that with their continued use of English through-
out the centuries, Africans have been able to adapt the language to suit their
communicative needs, thereby giving rise to indigenized varieties of the language
with their own unique phonological, morphological, lexical, and pragmatic
features, now known collectively as African Englishes. It is the documentation
of these distinctive features of African varieties of English in a historical dic-
tionary that will be the focus of the present article.
2. Documenting African Englishes in the Oxford English Dictionary
2.1 World Englishes in the OED
The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) is widely regarded as the undisputed
authority on the history of the English language. It is an historical dictionary of
unparalleled size and scope, showing not only the current meanings of hun-
dreds of thousands of words, but also tracing their chronological evolution
through millions of quotations taken from written examples of authentic lan-
guage use.
The OED is presently undergoing its first thoroughgoing revision and up-
date since it was first published in full in 1928. This endeavour, the biggest
http://lexikos.journals.ac.za; https://doi.org/10.5788/33-1-1774 (Project)
African Englishes in the Oxford English Dictionary 26
humanities project in the world, employs over 70 editors based mostly in
Oxford and New York. The dictionary's third and latest edition is accessible
through OED Online (oed.com), where updates are published quarterly. This
makes the OED a work in progress, a hybrid text which combines unrevised
entries from previous editions with fully revised and newly added entries. One
of the key components of the dictionary's revision project is improving and
widening its coverage of varieties of English used outside of the United King-
dom and the United States. This is in response to the global spread of English
and the emergence of new varieties of the language — collectively termed
World Englishes — that are developing their own standards of grammar, pro-
nunciation, and more importantly for a historical dictionary, lexis.
In recent years, the OED has undertaken targeted projects to broaden its
coverage of several World Englishes, publishing particularly large batches of
new and revised entries for varieties spoken in the Philippines, Malaysia, Singa-
pore, Hong Kong, India, Canada, Bermuda, the Caribbean, and Ireland. The
dictionary's latest quarterly updates have also featured the results of ongoing
editorial work on African Englishes. The OED's December 2018 update included
26 new entries from South African English (Salazar 2018), while its January 2020
update contained 29 new entries from Nigerian English (Salazar 2020). More
recently, the June 2022 update saw the publication of close to 200 new and
revised entries for words from East African Englishes, chiefly covering words
from Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda (Salazar 2022).
2.2 Selecting words for inclusion and editing entries
Lexicographers working on the OED today have several resources at their dis-
posal to track the emergence of new words and senses from different parts of
the English-speaking world. The principal research tool for this lexical moni-
toring is Oxford Languages'1 monitor corpus of English (henceforth the Oxford
Monitor Corpus), which currently contains over 14 billion words of web-based
news content from 2017 to the present day, and is updated each month. This
corpus also consists of subsections with texts from different countries, which
make it possible to carry out variety-specific searches and comparisons between
different varieties of English. As of this writing, the Oxford Monitor Corpus
contains around 284 million words of South African English, 158 million words
of Nigerian English, 133 million words of Ghanaian English,129 million words
of Kenyan English, and 16 million words of Ugandan English.
Another important resource for lexical monitoring is the OED's Reading
Programme database, which currently comprises over 1.3 million separate quota-
tions drawn from a huge variety of writing. The Reading Programme has been
in existence since 1857, when the British Philological Society began to recruit
volunteer readers to collect quotations for a planned historical dictionary that
would later become the OED. The database started as a collection of quotations
http://lexikos.journals.ac.za; https://doi.org/10.5788/33-1-1774 (Project)
27 Danica Salazar
written on slips of paper filed alphabetically, but has now evolved into a
digitally stored compendium that is fully searchable. An increasing number of
publications written in or about World Englishes is now being included in the
Reading Programme, so that a greater quantity of quotations from a wider geo-
graphical range of texts can be added to the database.
In addition to their in-house resources, the OED's lexicographers also
make use of external evidence sources to monitor lexical developments in dif-
ferent varieties of English. They regularly consult text databases, newspapers,
journals, and books from across the globe, as well as a number of regional dic-
tionaries and grammars. They are also aided by contributions from members of
the public, and specialist advice from an international network of consultants.
Various forms of social media have also given lexicographers a view into cur-
rent, informal, idiosyncratic uses of words from many different places, and
even allow them to reach out to speakers of World Englishes to ask them about
the words that characterize their vocabulary.
Once a list of candidates for inclusion has been established, OED editors
begin to carefully research both print sources and electronic databases to make
sure that there are several independent examples of each word being used, for
a reasonable amount of time and reasonable frequency in the types of text in
which it can be expected to be found. There is no exact timespan and frequency
threshold, as this may vary depending on each word. Some words are rela-
tively young, but they were quickly added to the OED because of the huge
social impact they had in such a short space of time; other words are not over-
whelmingly frequent, but are included because they are of specific cultural,
historical, or linguistic significance (see Diamond 2015).
The OED's editors consider thousands of word suggestions every year,
reviewing each and every one. Words that have not yet accumulated enough
evidence for permanent record in the OED remain on the watch list for continued
monitoring, while suggestions for words with sufficiently sustained and wide-
spread use are assigned to an editor.
Editors begin the process of drafting a dictionary entry by reviewing the
information gathered so far for their assigned word, before embarking on their
own research to trace the word's development. This research might lead them
to search newspaper archives, online forums, academic studies, magazines, law
tracts, recipe books, or social media for dated or dateable evidence of the word.
If a key example is available in a library or archive that they cannot access
digitally, they can enlist the help of the OED's network of researchers, who are
based at institutions around the world, to track down this example.
For historical research on African English words, online book, journal, and
newspaper depositories such as Google Books, Hathi Trust, Internet Archive,
Proquest, JSTOR, and Gale are especially useful for finding antedatings — the
earliest evidence of a word being used in English. Works of British traders,
explorers, and colonizers in Africa, as well as documents relating to British
colonial administration, are particularly rich sources of these antedatings. For
http://lexikos.journals.ac.za; https://doi.org/10.5788/33-1-1774 (Project)
African Englishes in the Oxford English Dictionary 28
example, First Footsteps in East Africa, British explorer Richard Francis Burton's
record of his first expedition to Somalia, published in 1856, is the source of the
OED's antedating for the word shuka, a noun referring to a long piece of fabric
usually worn as a loincloth or used as a bedsheet: 'He had ... a Shukkah or half
Tobe for his daughter' (Burton 1856: 92).
An invaluable source of historical data for South African English is the
Dictionary of South African English (DSAE), first published in print by Oxford
University Press in 1996 and now maintained as an online dictionary. The
DSAE follows the same historical principles as the OED, and now consists of
over 4,000 uniquely South African words across three centuries. OED editors
consult the DSAE for further information on South African vocabulary and
usage, as it contains material that is more detailed as regards to this particular
variety of English than that published in the OED.
For more contemporary quotations, OED lexicographers working on Afri-
can English entries usually consult the newspaper database Nexis, which in-
cludes the latest issues of a number of newspapers published across Africa. As
previously mentioned, social media sites, particularly Twitter, also provide
plenty of evidence for current African English vocabulary, especially for slang
and colloquial usages. The tweet shown in Figure 1, posted by a Tanzanian on
Twitter in 2020, is the last quotation for the OED entry for chips(i) mayai, the
name of a thick omelette having fried potatoes (chips) mixed in with the eggs
during cooking, often eaten as a street food in Kenya and Tanzania.
Figure 1: Tweet cited in the OED as an example for the Tanzanian noun
chips(i) mayai
Although the OED now has access to a more geographically diverse range of
research resources, it remains true that the amount of lexicographical evidence
available for region-specific vocabulary is still very small compared to that for
general English. This is also due to the fact that publications in postcolonial
nations continue to be edited following British or American standards, so that
http://lexikos.journals.ac.za; https://doi.org/10.5788/33-1-1774 (Project)
29 Danica Salazar
lexical innovations in speech may not always make it into published writing
(Salazar 2014). For this reason, OED editors are increasingly turning to less
mediated forms of writing, such as social media posts and song lyrics, in order
to find quotations that more closely approximate the way that speakers of
World English talk, and therefore serve as more authentic illustrations of how
World English words are used in real-life contexts (Salazar 2021).
Yet another important data source for contemporary evidence of African
English usage is the Corpus of Global Web-based English (GloWbE), which
consists of about 1.9 billion words of text in 1.8 million web pages from 340,000
websites in 20 different Anglophone countries, including South Africa (45 million
words), Nigeria (43 million words), Ghana (39 million words), Kenya (41 mil-
lion words), and Tanzania (35 million words). Just like the Oxford Monitor
Corpus, GloWbE allows for many types of searches and comparisons between
different varieties.
Once an editor has collected enough evidence to form a detailed picture of
the word, they begin to build their dictionary entry, adding each element,
beginning with the headword and including its pronunciation, variant forms,
etymology, definition, example quotations, and any other senses or associated
phrases it may have. For new senses of existing words, these are included in
their chronological position in the entry, with the definition and example quo-
tations.
In choosing the illustrative quotations to include in a World English entry,
it is now of utmost importance for an OED editor to ensure that these quota-
tions are taken from works written by speakers of the variety in question, and
published in the word's place of origin. Consider this entry for buka, a Nigerian
English word for a roadside restaurant or food stall (Figure 2).
Figure 2: OED entry for the Nigerian noun buka
http://lexikos.journals.ac.za; https://doi.org/10.5788/33-1-1774 (Project)
African Englishes in the Oxford English Dictionary 30
It can be seen that all the quotations for this entry come from Nigerian sources,
from its earliest attested use in 1972 in The Combat, a historical novel written by
Nigerian author Kole Omotoso, to a 1991 quotation taken from Nigerian writer
Ben Okri's Booker Prize-winning novel The Famished Road, to tweets posted by
Nigerians.
In their definition, an editor can also add geographical labels, as well as
provide more discursive information to accompany these labels. Note how the
entry for buka includes a Nigerian English label. The definition also comments
on the frequent use of buka as a modifier, and cross-refers to bukateria and mama
put, synonymous words for which the OED also has entries.
After the editor finishes their draft, the entry is passed on to several spe-
cialist teams at the OED, such as the etymologists, who check the accuracy of
and add more detailed information on the origin of the word, and the bibliog-
raphers, who review the quotations to ensure that sources are cited correctly.
Table 1: List of varieties of English for which the OED has a pronunciation
model (as of November 2022)
Australian English
Indian English
Singapore and Malaysian English
Bermudian English
Irish English
South African English
Canadian English
Manx English
Welsh English
Caribbean English
New Zealand English
West African English
East African English
Philippine English
Hong Kong English
Scottish English
Another specialist group in the OED is the Pronunciations team. The diction-
ary's Pronunciation editors have formulated specific pronunciation models for
several World English varieties (see Table 1 for a complete list), which can all
be consulted on the OED website. Each pronunciation model has a dedicated
page with a discussion of the rationale for the model, along with major refer-
ence sources and potential discrepancies and compromises. These models were
developed using pronunciation data drawn from varietal dictionaries, knowl-
edgeable native speakers and expert consultants, and online evidence of natu-
ral language use. The OED's East African pronunciation model (Sangster and
Moreland 2022) is based primarily on the work of Josef Schmied, who was also
the dictionary's phonetic consultant; its pronunciation model for South African
English largely drew from the work of Sean Bowerman and the contrasts found
in the DSAE (Sangster and Moreland 2016); and its West African English pro-
nunciation model is chiefly informed by the work of Ulrike Gut, who similarly
acted as the OED's phonetic consultant (Sangster and Moreland 2020).
These pronunciation models form the basis of variety-specific transcrip-
tions in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) for World English entries,
accompanied by recorded audio pronunciations. See, for instance, how in the
OED's entry for buka (Figure 3), there are the IPA transcriptions and audio pro-
http://lexikos.journals.ac.za; https://doi.org/10.5788/33-1-1774 (Project)
31 Danica Salazar
nunciations in British and American English that are standard for all non-
obsolete OED entries, but alongside these is the IPA transcription in West Afri-
can English, and a blue button that, when clicked, will play a recording of the
word being pronounced in a West African accent, as determined by the OED's
pronunciation model for West African English.
Figure 3: IPA transcriptions and audio pronunciations for the Nigerian noun
buka in British English, American English, and West African English
The audio pronunciations are not synthesized, but are recordings made by
actor-phoneticians recruited for each variety, who came to Oxford University
Press' recording facilities in Oxford to read each transcription aloud. The OED
currently features 1,016 South African English transcriptions, for which there
are 1,010 sound files; 299 West African English transcriptions, for which there
are 256 sound files; and 140 East African transcriptions and sound files. The
dictionary's review of World English pronunciations is a work in progress, and
pronunciation models for more varieties, along with transcriptions and audio
recordings for corresponding entries, are continuously added to the dictionary
by its Pronunciations team.
Once the dictionary entry has been signed off by each specialist team, it is
given a final review by the dictionary's Chief and Deputy Chief Editors, before
it finally takes its place in the OED.
The publication of the OED's World English updates is accompanied by
detailed release notes on the OED blog. The varieties of English covered by the
dictionary are also featured in the dictionary's World English Hub, a section of
its publicly accessible pages which serves as a central repository for the content
and resources related to World Englishes on the OED site2. The OED also pro-
motes further engagement with its World English content by regularly hosting
webinars3 on various topics relating to variation in English, as well as bigger
events such as the Oxford World English Symposium, held online in April 20224.
3. Elements of the African English lexicon in the OED
This section will highlight a selection of African words and phrases that have
recently been added to or revised in the OED, all of which show the patterns of
lexical innovation in African Englishes.
http://lexikos.journals.ac.za; https://doi.org/10.5788/33-1-1774 (Project)
African Englishes in the Oxford English Dictionary 32
3.1 Borrowings
A significant proportion of the OED's new and revised entries for African vari-
eties have been borrowed into English from some of the most widely spoken
languages on the continent. For South African English, Afrikaans is a particu-
larly important source for such loanwords, lending two of the oldest words in
the dictionary's December 2018 update. Deurmekaar, first attested in 1871, is an
adjective applied to something that is confused, muddled, or mixed up. The
adverb voetstoots was first used in English in 1883 as a legal term describing the
buying or selling of items in their existing condition, but nearly a hundred
years later, it also began to be used more generally to describe actions done
unconditionally, without reservation or qualification.
Later borrowings from Afrikaans were first seen in English in the first half
of the 20th century. They include eina (first attested 1913), an interjection express-
ing sharp pain or distress, and dwaal (1957), a noun referring to a dreamy,
dazed, or absent-minded state, frequently used in the phrase in a dwaal.
Other words in the OED's recent update for the English of South Africa have
their roots in two of the country's other official languages — Xhosa and Zulu.
The oldest of these loanwords date to the late 19th century: amakhosi (1857), a
collective term of Xhosa and Zulu origin for tribal leaders or chiefs in tradi-
tional Nguni societies, and ubuntu (1860), a word signifying the fundamental
values of humanity or of Africanness, also borrowed partly from Xhosa and
partly from Zulu. Ingcibi, first used in English in 1937, is a Xhosa word for a
person who performs circumcisions on young men as part of a traditional rite
of passage, while the more contemporary borrowing Mzansi, dating from 1999,
is the Xhosa name for South Africa, and for South Africans as a people.
Two years later, the OED's new additions for Nigerian English included
such loanwords as the aforementioned buka, which was borrowed from the
Yoruba word búkà, meaning a hut or market stall, and was itself borrowed from
the Hausa word búkkàa, signifying a grass shed or hut. Two other Yoruba bor-
rowings in the Nigerian update are the noun danfo (first attested 1973), which
refers to a yellow minibus that carries passengers for a fare as part of an infor-
mal transport system in Lagos, and tokunbo (1990), an adjective denoting an
imported second-hand product, especially a car. The latter comes from the
Yoruba word tòkunbo, which literally translates into English as 'from overseas',
and is formed by the words ti 'from, belonging to', òkun 'ocean, sea', and bo
'to
return'.
Nigerian Pidgin is another fount of new words for Nigerian English. Sef,
first evidenced in Ben Okri's novel Flowers and Shadows, published in 1980, is an
adverb borrowed from Pidgin, which itself could have been an adverbial use of
either the English adjective safe or the pronoun self. It is an emphatic marker
added to the end of statements or rhetorical questions, often to express irrita-
tion or impatience, as in this quotation from Nigerian author Chimamanda
Ngozi Adichie's 2013 novel Americanah: 'He could have given you reduced rent
http://lexikos.journals.ac.za; https://doi.org/10.5788/33-1-1774 (Project)
33 Danica Salazar
in one of his properties, even a free flat sef' (Adichie 2013: 396).
Also coming from pidgin contexts is the verb chop, which is a common
colloquial word in Ghana and Nigeria meaning 'to eat'. However, beginning in
the 1970s, chop also developed the sense of acquiring money quickly and easily,
and often dishonestly. The negative sense of misappropriating, extorting, or
embezzling funds is also in the earlier reduplicative noun chop-chop (first
attested 1966), which refers to bribery and corruption in public life. This
likening of stealing money to actually devouring it is also reflected in the even
earlier synonymous phrase to eat money (1960), as in the following quotation
from the 22 August 2016 issue of Nigeria's News Chronicle: 'Our roads were not
done. By the end of this year, you will know who ate the money of these roads'.
More recently, the OED's update for East African Englishes published in
its June 2022 update is dominated by loanwords from Swahili, the region's
main lingua franca. This long list of borrowings includes the oldest of the new
entries in the batch, jembe, referring to a hoe-shaped hand tool used for digging,
which is first attested in an article by Richard Francis Burton published in the
Journal of the Royal Geographical Society in 1860. Over a hundred years later,
renowned Kenyan writer and academic Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o used the same
word in his historical novel A Grain of Wheat, first published in 1967.
One of the newest words in the East African update is also a Swahili loan:
sambaza, a verb originally used to mean 'to send mobile phone credit to
someone', but is now used more generally to mean 'to share or send some-
thing'. Dating back to 2007, the English word comes from the Swahili word
-sambaza meaning 'to spread, disperse, scatter', and now also 'to transfer mobile
phone credit'. The transmission into English of this usage with reference to
mobile phone credit may have been reinforced by the use of the Swahili word
in the name for a credit sharing system in Kenya, introduced in 2005.
Other borrowings in this batch include Swahili forms of address such as
mwalimu 'teacher' (first attested 1884), as well as Bwana (1860) and its abbrevia-
tion, Bw (1973), a title of courtesy or respect prefixed to the surname or first name
of a man. There are also expressions and discourse markers of Swahili origin
such as asante sana (1911) 'thank you', pole sana (1966) 'sorry', and ati (2010) 'as
someone said; reportedly, allegedly'.
In addition to words used throughout the region, the OED's East African
update also features words unique to the varieties of English spoken in Kenya,
Tanzania, and Uganda. The lexicon of Kenyan English is represented by bor-
rowings from a few of its many languages: for example, kiondo (1902) from
Kikuyu and Isukuti (1972) from Luhya. A kiondo is a handwoven bag made
from cord or string, now usually of sisal, with long handles or straps that can
be slung over the shoulder, typical of the traditional handicraft of the Kikuyu
and Kamba peoples of Kenya. An isukuti is a wooden drum, traditionally made
from a hollowed log, which is usually hung over the shoulder and played by
striking with the fingers and palms. Isukuti is also the name of a rhythmic,
energetic traditional celebratory dance accompanied by drumming and sing-
http://lexikos.journals.ac.za; https://doi.org/10.5788/33-1-1774 (Project)
African Englishes in the Oxford English Dictionary 34
ing, performed typically at festivals and weddings by the Luhya peoples of
Western Kenya, such as the Isukha and Idakho.
Also included in this update are names of Kenyan dishes such as githeri
(1973), a traditional central Kenyan dish consisting of boiled maize and legumes,
typically beans; and irio (1931), a dish consisting of mashed potatoes or sweet
potatoes with maize, peas, and leafy green vegetables such as spinach, typically
eaten as an accompaniment to other dishes. Also newly added to the OED are
names of traditional Kenyan home-brewed alcoholic drinks: muratina (1904),
made from the fermented fruit of the sausage tree, also known locally as
muratina; busaa (1967), made from fermented millet, maize, or sorghum flour;
and changaa (1975), made from fermented millet, maize, or sorghum grains, a
liquor so strong its production and distribution were illegal in Kenya until 2010.
As for Tanzanian English, one of the most widely known words from this
variety is daladala, the name of a van or minibus that carries passengers for a
fare as part of a local informal transport system. Dating back to 1983, the Eng-
lish word comes from Swahili, with daladala being a reduplication of dala 'dol-
lar', perhaps originally as a bus driver's call. Dala is also the nickname of the
Tanzanian 5-shilling coin, which used to be the typical fare for daladala mini-
buses.
The vocabulary of Ugandan English draws primarily from Luganda, one
of the country's major languages (Isingoma 2016). Examples of Lugandan bor-
rowings in this batch are kaveera (1994) 'a plastic bag, plastic packaging';
kwanjula (1973) 'an engagement ceremony where the families of the bride and
groom formally meet'; and nkuba kyeyo (1991) 'a Ugandan person working over-
seas, especially one doing a low-paid or unskilled job' — the Lugandan phrase
literally means 'someone who sweeps'. Katogo (1940) is another loan word from
Luganda — it is the name of a typical Ugandan breakfast dish consisting of
matoke (banana or plantain) boiled in a pot with various other ingredients. The
word later developed a figurative sense, as it began to be used to mean 'a mix-
ture or fusion of disparate elements; a mess, a muddle'.
3.2 Other lexical innovations
The African English word stock is characterized not just by borrowings, but
also by lexical innovations based on English elements, several of which have
now made their way into the OED. They include words formed through suffix-
ation, such as the East African word unprocedural (first attested 1929), meaning
irregular or illegal; or through compounding, such as bunny chow (1972), the
name of a popular South African takeaway dish consisting of a hollowed-out
loaf of bread filled with curry; barbing salon (1979), the Nigerian expression for
a barber's shop; and deskmate (1850), a compound East Africans use to refer to a
person who sits next to another at school.
A few of the African English words in recent OED updates were created by
shortening existing English words, like the South African greeting howzit? (1918)
http://lexikos.journals.ac.za; https://doi.org/10.5788/33-1-1774 (Project)
35 Danica Salazar
and the East African verb collabo (2008), short for 'collaborate', used especially
of musicians. Another example is the Nigerian English adjective guber (1989),
which is short for 'gubernatorial' — so Nigerians, for instance, would call a per-
son running for governor a 'guber candidate'. Another frequently used clipping
with a longer history in English is agric. It was originally used in American
English around 1812 as a graphic abbreviation for the adjective agricultural, but
is now used chiefly in this sense in West Africa. In the early 1990s, agric began
to be used in Nigeria to designate improved or genetically modified varieties of
crops or breeds of livestock, especially a type of commercially reared chicken
that is frequently contrasted with native chicken. Two decades later, Nigerian
students also started to use the word as a noun meaning agricultural science as
an academic subject or course.
A number of the African English entries that have recently been docu-
mented in the OED are for words that have developed meanings specific to the
region. One notable example is K-leg, earliest seen in 1842 in British English,
but now used mostly in Nigerian English. It is another term for the condition of
knock knees, as well as a depreciative name for a person affected with this
condition, whose inward-turning knees often resemble the shape of the letter K.
It is of such widespread use in Nigeria that by the early 1980s, it had also
acquired a figurative meaning — a K-leg can now also be any sort of problem,
flaw, setback, or obstacle.
Also in Nigerian English, a gist (1990) is a rumour, and to gist (1992) is to
gossip; and something described as qualitative (1976) is excellent or of high
quality. In East African English, the noun tarmac (1982) is also used as a verb
meaning 'to walk the streets looking for work; to job hunt'; a person who is
pressed (1958) needs to go to the bathroom, while a stage (1965) is a bus stop or a
taxi rank. In Kenyan English, a biting (1997) is a bite-sized piece of food, a small
snack, appetizer, or canapé; while a merry-go-round (1989) is an informal coop-
erative savings scheme, typically run by and for women, in which each partici-
pant regularly contributes an amount, and the whole sum is distributed to the
members in turn. To shrub is to pronounce or write words in another language
in a manner that is influenced by one's mother tongue, and a shrub (2008) is a
word pronounced or written in this manner. To shrub and shrub are colloquial-
isms chiefly used with reference to English or Swahili words pronounced in a
manner characteristic of another Kenyan language. In Ugandan English, to cow-
ardize (2003) is to act like a coward or to lose one's nerve, while to extend (2000)
is to move from one's position so as to make room for someone else.
African Englishes also have their share of idiosyncratic phrases. In South
Africa, a non-committal, resigned, or ironic 'whatever' is expressed as ja well no
fine, pronounced quickly, almost as one word. In Uganda, well done (1971) is
used as a friendly greeting or salutation, especially when encountering a per-
son at work or in a state of activity; you are lost! (2013) is also used as a greeting,
or in response to a greeting, in a manner similar to 'long time no see'.
http://lexikos.journals.ac.za; https://doi.org/10.5788/33-1-1774 (Project)
African Englishes in the Oxford English Dictionary 36
3.3 Semantic fields
Schmied (1991: 82, 84) gives the natural and built environment, food, people,
and clothing as semantic fields in which Africanisms often occur. This is reflected
in the OED, as many of its newly recorded and revised African English entries
belong to these domains. Table 2 shows some examples from the dictionary for
each of these areas of meaning.
Table 2: Examples of African English entries in the OED belonging to com-
monly occurring semantic fields
Semantic
field
Word
Date of first
quotation
Variety
Definition
Food
bunny chow, n.
1972
South
African
a South African dish con-
sisting of a hollowed-out
loaf of bread (or part of a
loaf) filled with curry,
typically sold as take-
away food; a serving of
this
chapo, n.
1993
East
African
a thin pancake of un-
leavened wholemeal
bread cooked on a griddle
mandazi, n.
1937
East
African
a small cake consisting of
sweetened dough fried in
oil, usually triangular in
shape and typically eaten
as a snack or as an accom-
paniment to other dishes;
(as a mass noun) these
cakes collectively
nyama choma, n.
1980
East
African
roasted or grilled meat
sarmie, n.
1970
South
African
a sandwich
Clothing
buibui, n.
1929
East
African
a traditional garment
worn by Muslim women
in East Africa, typically a
long black gown with a
black head covering that
leaves only the eyes or
face exposed
http://lexikos.journals.ac.za; https://doi.org/10.5788/33-1-1774 (Project)
37 Danica Salazar
kanga, n.
1895
East
African
a type of cotton fabric
printed with designs in
bright colours, typically
in squares or rectangles
featuring a border on all
four sides, and used
especially for women's
clothing; a piece of this
fabric, often worn as a
shawl or wrap
kanzu, n.
1870
East
African
a long, loose-fitting white
tunic worn by men
Environment
banda, n.
1908
East
African
a hut or shed with a
thatched roof, used typi-
cally as a rest house or
shelter for travellers
boma, n.
1860
East
African
a barrier formed from
thorny branches or
wooden stakes, used for
defence against attacks
by enemies or wild ani-
mals; a fence, palisade, or
stockade
duka, n.
1912
East
African
a small neighbourhood
store selling a variety of
goods
spaza, n.
1988
South
African
a small, unregulated and
unlicensed grocery shop
in a township, usually
run from a private house
tembe, n.
1860
East
African
a rectangular house with
mud walls and a flat roof
People
district sur-
geon, n.
1829
South
African
a doctor appointed by the
government to fulfil spe-
cific functions in a par-
ticular district; (now)
spec. a police surgeon or
forensic medical examiner
ingcibi, n.
1937
South
African
among Xhosas: a man
who performs circumci-
sions on young males as
part of the traditional
initiation ritual symbol-
izing passage into man-
hood
http://lexikos.journals.ac.za; https://doi.org/10.5788/33-1-1774 (Project)
African Englishes in the Oxford English Dictionary 38
non-indigene,
adj.
1907
West
African
belonging to an ethnic
group considered not to
be indigenous to a par-
ticular area
Another semantic field that is of particular significance to Africa has to do with
street food. In Nigerian English, there are at least three words indicating a
roadside restaurant or street stall that sells local fare at low prices. One of them
is the aforementioned buka, while another is bukateria (first attested 1980),
which adds to buka the –teria ending from the word cafeteria. An even more cre-
ative synonym is mama put, from 1979, which comes from the way that custom-
ers usually order food in a buka: they say 'Mama, put ...' to the woman running
the stall, and indicate the dish they want. The word later became a generic name
for the female food vendors themselves — Nobel Prize-winning Nigerian play-
wright Wole Soyinka notably includes a Mama Put character in one of his works.
The informal transport systems that emerged in Africa's huge, densely
populated cities such as Lagos and Dar es Salaam have also necessitated lexical
invention. Apart from the previously mentioned Nigerian danfo and Tanzanian
daladala, there is also the Nigerian okada (1993), the term for a motorcycle that
passengers can use as a taxi service. The name is a reference to Okada Air, an
airline that operated in Nigeria from 1983 to 1997, and its reputation as a fast
yet potentially dangerous form of transport, just like the motorcycle taxi.
Tanzania's contemporary music scene is represented in the OED by Bongo
Flava (2003) and singeli (2015). Singeli is a Tanzanian style of fast-paced elec-
tronic dance music, combining elements of hip-hop with influences from East
African popular music such as taarab (1969), a form of music originating in
Zanzibar. Bongo Flava, another style of music from Tanzania, fuses elements of
American hip-hop with influences from reggae, R&B, Afrobeat, dancehall, and
traditional East African forms of popular music, and features lyrics in Swahili
or English. Bongo (1993) is a nickname for the city of Dar es Salaam — bongo
being the Swahili word for 'brain' or 'intelligence', something one needs a lot of
in order to thrive in the most populous city in Tanzania.
4. Conclusion
As can be concluded from the many lexical examples given throughout this
article, African speakers of English have long adopted the language and
adapted it as a means of expressing their own identity, culture, and experience.
Yet despite this, their performance in English continues to be unfairly judged
based on exonormative norms set by more prestigious varieties such as British
and American English.
It is hoped that the OED's continuing efforts to document the lexicon of
African Englishes can play a part in changing this deficit view of these varieties.
http://lexikos.journals.ac.za; https://doi.org/10.5788/33-1-1774 (Project)
39 Danica Salazar
As explained earlier in this paper, African English entries in the OED undergo
the same thorough and comprehensive research process that all entries in the
OED go through before publication. By providing all of this high-quality
historical dictionary data for African English words, the OED offers proof of
the longevity and stability of these words, and by extension, the longevity and
stability of African Englishes. This data can also be used by other researchers to
undertake different kinds of historical and lexical investigations of these
varieties.
In addition, recording African English words in a dictionary, especially an
authoritative historical dictionary such as the OED, is a highly visible way of
recognizing the valuable contributions that African Englishes have made to the
development of the English lexicon. As Nigerian writer T.J. Benson commented
to Reuters in January 2020 in reference to the OED's then newly published
Nigerian English update (Ukomadu and Carsten 2020), 'I think this (recogni-
tion) is empowering for lots of us writers and for everyday people, because at
the end of the day it ties back to identity and how we perceive ourselves and
how we express ourselves'.
Endnotes
1. Oxford Languages is the department of Oxford University Press that is home to the Oxford
English Dictionary as well as a wide range of dictionaries and lexical datasets for English and
other languages.
2. The OED's World English Hub can be found at https://public.oed.com/world-englishes/. It
has individual pages for East African English, Kenyan English, Nigerian English, South Afri-
can English, Tanzanian English, and Ugandan English.
3. Information on the OED's upcoming webinars, as well as recordings of its past webinars can
be found at https://public.oed.com/webinars-and-events/. A recent webinar relating to African
Englishes is 'Mama put in the OED: World Englishes and the Oxford English Dictionary', fea-
turing Kingsley Ugwuanyi, the OED's consultant for Nigerian English.
4. All recordings from the Oxford World English Symposium 2022 can be found at https://
public.oed.com/world-englishes/oed-symposium-2022/. The Symposium features three presen-
tations on African Englishes: 'World Englishes and context-based ELT in Nigeria' by Joy
Onyemaechi of the University of Abuja, 'South African English and OUP Southern Africa' by
Phillip Louw, formerly of OUP South Africa and now Editor-in-Chief and Executive Director
of the Woordeboek van die Afrikaanse Taal, and 'Ugandan English' by Bebwa Isingoma of Gulu
University.
References
Dictionaries and tools
Corpus of Global Web-Based English (GloWbE). https://www.english-corpora.org/glowbe/. Accessed
on 19 Nov. 2022.
http://lexikos.journals.ac.za; https://doi.org/10.5788/33-1-1774 (Project)
African Englishes in the Oxford English Dictionary 40
Dictionary of South African English (DSAE). Van Niekerk, T. (Ed.). https://www.dsae.co.za/. Accessed
on 19 Nov. 2022.
Oxford English Dictionary (OED) (2000–). Third edition (in progress). Simpson, J.A. (2000–2013) and
M. Proffitt (2013–). (Ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press. https://www.oed.com/. Accessed
on 19 Nov. 2022.
Other literature
Adichie, C.N. 2013. Americanah. London: 4th Estate.
Burton, R.F. 1856. First Footsteps in East Africa. London: Longman, Brown, Green and Longmans.
Diamond, G. 2015. Making Decisions about Inclusion and Exclusion. Durkin, P. (Ed.). 2015: 532-545.
Durkin, P. (Ed.). 2015. The Oxford Handbook of Lexicography. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Isingoma, B. 2016. Lexical Borrowings and Calques in Ugandan English. Meierkord, C. et al. (Eds.).
2016: 149-172.
Meierkord, C., B. Isingoma and S. Namyalo (Eds.). 2016. Ugandan English: Its Sociolinguistics,
Structure and Uses in a Globalising Post-Protectorate. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Salazar, D. 2014. Towards Improved Coverage of Southeast Asian Englishes in the Oxford English
Dictionary. Lexicography 1(1): 95-108.
Salazar, D. 2018. South African Additions to the OED. Oxford. https://public.oed.com/blog/south-
african-additions-oed/. Accessed on 19 Nov. 2022.
Salazar, D. 2020. Release Notes: Nigerian English. Oxford. https://public.oed.com/blog/nigerian-english-
release-notes/. Accessed on 19 Nov. 2022.
Salazar, D. 2021. Documenting World Englishes in the Oxford English Dictionary: Past Perspectives,
Present Developments, and Future Directions. Onysko, A. (Ed.). 2021. Research Developments
in World Englishes: 271-294. London: Bloomsbury.
Salazar, D. 2022. Release Notes: East African English. Oxford. https://public.oed.com/blog/release-
notes-east-african-english-june-2022/. Accessed on 19 Nov. 2022.
Sangster, C. and M. Moreland. 2016. Pronunciation Model: South African English. Oxford. https://
public.oed.com/how-to-use-the-oed/key-to-pronunciation/pronunciations-for-world-englishes/
pronunciation-model-south-african-english/. Accessed on 19 Nov. 2022.
Sangster, C. and M. Moreland. 2020. Release Notes: West African English Pronunciations. Oxford.
https://public.oed.com/blog/release-notes-west-african-english-pronunciations/. Accessed on
19 Nov. 2022.
Sangster, C. and M. Moreland. 2022. Pronunciation Model: East African English. Oxford. https://
public.oed.com/how-to-use-the-oed/key-to-pronunciation/pronunciations-for-world-englishes/
pronunciation-model-east-african-english/. Accessed on 19 Nov. 2022.
Schmied, J.J. 1991. English in Africa: An Introduction. New York: Longman.
Ukomadu, A. and P. Carsten. 2020. Nigeria and the Oxford English Dictionary 'rub minds'. Reuters,
28 January 2020. https://news.trust.org/item/20200128092541-su613. Accessed on 19 Nov. 2022.
Van Rooy, B. 2020. English in Africa. Schreier, D., M. Hundt and E.W. Schneider (Eds.). 2020. The
Cambridge Handbook of World Englishes: 210-235. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
http://lexikos.journals.ac.za; https://doi.org/10.5788/33-1-1774 (Project)
