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The editors describe key contributors, how inherited materials were reworked, and the addition of more than 2,500 new entries. It explains the dictionary’s scope across roughly three centuries, from the late sixteenth to the late twentieth century, and notes the completion around South Africa’s first democratic elections in 1994. The text also outlines editorial methods, including sourcing from print, overheard speech, and ephemeral media, while addressing issues of regional, racial, and linguistic variation, code-switching, and borrowed vocabulary.",{"@graph":69,"@context":122},[70,84,105],{"@type":71,"itemListElement":72},"BreadcrumbList",[73,77,79,82],{"item":74,"name":75,"@type":76,"position":8},"https://docshare.wps.com","Home","ListItem",{"item":78,"name":9,"@type":76,"position":14},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/",{"item":80,"name":15,"@type":76,"position":81},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/literature/",3,{"item":83,"name":65,"@type":76,"position":19},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/preface-490691/490691/",{"url":83,"name":65,"@type":85,"image":86,"author":91,"headline":65,"publisher":94,"fileFormat":97,"inLanguage":63,"description":67,"dateModified":98,"datePublished":99,"encodingFormat":97,"isAccessibleForFree":100,"interactionStatistic":101},"DigitalDocument",{"url":87,"@type":88,"width":89,"height":90},"https://docshare.wps.com/thumbnails/preface-490691/490691.png","ImageObject",300,407,{"name":92,"@type":93},"WPS_1786070896","Person",{"url":74,"name":95,"@type":96},"DocShare","Organization","application/pdf","2026-10-29","2026-10-01",true,{"@type":102,"interactionType":103,"userInteractionCount":14},"InteractionCounter",{"@type":104},"ViewAction",{"@type":106,"mainEntity":107},"FAQPage",[108,114,118],{"name":109,"@type":110,"acceptedAnswer":111},"What is the purpose of the dictionary described in the preface and introduction?","Question",{"text":112,"@type":113},"The dictionary records and illustrates the vocabulary of English in South Africa over about three centuries, including standard meanings, local senses, and words borrowed or coined for local phenomena.","Answer",{"name":115,"@type":110,"acceptedAnswer":116},"How did the editors compile the dictionary entries?",{"text":117,"@type":113},"They reworked inherited materials over several years, added many new entries, and gathered examples not only from printed sources but also from overheard conversations and ephemeral media such as letters, handbills, and radio or television broadcasts.",{"name":119,"@type":110,"acceptedAnswer":120},"Why does the introduction discuss language segregation and separate development?",{"text":121,"@type":113},"It explains that apartheid-era laws geographically segregated communities, which contributed to varieties of English developing separately and affecting how vocabulary and usage could be understood across groups.","https://schema.org",{"og:url":83,"og:type":124,"og:title":65,"og:site_name":95,"og:description":67},"article",{"robots":126,"canonical":83},"index,follow",{"doc_id":128,"site_id":62},490691,1790841413,{"code":4,"msg":5,"data":131},{"doc_id":128,"user_id":132,"nickname":92,"user_avatar":133,"doc_module":4,"category_id":14,"category_name":15,"doc_title":65,"doc_description":67,"doc_content":134,"file_id":135,"file_url":136,"file_type":137,"file_size":138,"view_count":14,"is_deleted":4,"is_public":8,"is_downloadable":8,"audit_status":8,"page_count":19,"language":139,"language_code":63,"site_id":62,"html_lang":63,"table_of_contents":140,"faqs":141,"seo_title":142,"seo_description":67,"update_tm":129,"read_time":29},549768072016,"https://ap-avatar.wpscdn.com/davatar_155a257f0dc6eb9ab79c44ca47cae57d","Preface  \nPenny Silva, Managing Editor of the original print edition, April 1995  \nIntroduction  \nThis dictionary is the product of twenty-five years of work, and contains the accumulated and synthesized insight, skills, knowledge, and resourcefulness of many people. Three who made most significant contributions are no longer working in the Dictionary Unit: William Branford initiated the project and guided it for close to two decades, and Jean Branford and Margaret Britz worked on it for much of that time. In addition the employees of the Dictionary Unit for South African English, those acknowledged for the assistance they have so generously given the project, and the many hundreds of unnamed South Africans who have telephoned, written, or stopped staff members in the street with snippets of information have all contributed to the text, whose threads are too tightly interwoven to be distinguishable as the work of any one individual.  \nThe present shape of the dictionary particularly reflects the combined work of the small editorial staff, which, over four years, reworked the material they had inherited from others, and added over 2,500 new entries. While all staff members participated in every facet of the work, each also became skilled in particular areas—Wendy Dore in styling, Dorothea Mantzelin bibliography and natural history, Penny Silva in history, Colin Muller in African languages and management of the computer network. Through communal decision-making the editors decided upon policy and developed new methodology.  \nBegun in 1969 during the height of the apartheid era, the dictionary records the vocabulary of English in South Africa over 300 years: from the late sixteenth to the late twentieth century. The work was completed at the end of 1994, the year of the country’s first democratic elections.  \nIn compiling the text, the editors have made a conscious attempt to give voice not only to the documented utterances of powerful men, but also to the daily speech of ordinary people—men, women, and children—who are identified as ‘informants’ in the text and acknowledged by name wherever possible. Illustrations have thus been gleaned not only from the printed word, but also from overheard conversations, and from ephemeral sources such as letters, handbills, and radio and television broadcasts.  \nThe dictionary attempts to map and illustrate the complex landscape of that variety of English which is particular to South Africans—words borrowed from the many languages of South Africa, English words which have acquired particular senses here, and words coined for local phenomena. A few words and phrases which are not South African in origin, but which have a particular significance for South Africans (e.g. constructive engagement, Sullivan (principles), and Eminent Persons Group), have been included.  \nSouth African English (S. Afr. Eng.) is the property not only of South Africa’s relatively small number of English-speakers (about 10% of the population), but also of the much greater number of people who use English as a second or third language. All varieties of English are represented in this dictionary, and the provenance of regional or ‘group’ vocabulary is provided wherever a word is not widely familiar to South Africans. If these descriptions sometimes seem uncomfortably like racial labels, this is because the Group Areas Act ensured that for over forty years people were geographically segregated along racial lines; ‘separate development’ensured that varieties of English developed separately, the vocabulary or English usage of each group being only partially understandable to others. Typical of this breakdown in comprehension is the use of the word late (deceased), which is used in general English only attributively (‘my late father’), but is usually heard in ‘township’ English in the predicative (‘my father is late’). The separation by racial or linguistic group is reflected also, for instance, in the two headwords bhuti and","cbCailwahofa1LV5","https://ap.wps.com/l/cbCailwahofa1LV5","pdf",284271,"English","# Preface\n## Introduction\n## Compiling scope and time period\n## Sources and editorial approach\n## Mapping variation and borrowed vocabulary\n## Language segregation and code-switching\n## Addressing critiques and inclusion of standard vocabulary\n## Challenges in describing borrowed words","[{\"question\":\"What is the purpose of the dictionary described in the preface and introduction?\",\"answer\":\"The dictionary records and illustrates the vocabulary of English in South Africa over about three centuries, including standard meanings, local senses, and words borrowed or coined for local phenomena.\"},{\"question\":\"How did the editors compile the dictionary entries?\",\"answer\":\"They reworked inherited materials over several years, added many new entries, and gathered examples not only from printed sources but also from overheard conversations and ephemeral media such as letters, handbills, and radio or television broadcasts.\"},{\"question\":\"Why does the introduction discuss language segregation and separate development?\",\"answer\":\"It explains that apartheid-era laws geographically segregated communities, which contributed to varieties of English developing separately and affecting how vocabulary and usage could be understood across groups.\"}]","Preface | PDF"]