Glossary

First, a quote:  "A language is a dialect with an army and a navy."  It's usually credited to a linguist named Max Weinreich, but per this article in the Economist, he claimed to have been quoting a friend.  I only know of Weinreich through the article -- anyone who has heard my struggle with Afrikaans will know I am no linguistics expert.  I nonetheless take issue with the contention; my own nation has a rather humongous army and a big, active navy, but most of its people speak a dialect of English that is usually called standard American English.  We do not confuse our umbrella's and pants and ah-LOO-min-um's with standard British English's brolly's and trousers and AL-you-min-um's.

In Namibia, where English is the official language, more than a dozen other languages, none with armies or navies of their own, are spoken by tens of thousands of people each.  And those languages have informed the English dialect, which people often call 'Namlish' in a self-deprecating way.  No need.  It's mostly the same, and the differences just make things interesting.  Here's a few words I use in the blog, and some others I just like.  Also, some Peace Corps slang.

Africa time:  Late, probably by at least 30 minutes.  I strongly dislike this expression, although I am chronically tardy myself, though rarely at work.  This is some kind of humble-bragging, self-lacerating excuse-mongering.  Humbug.
Are we together?:  Are you with me?  Does everyone understand?  Usually said in a classroom setting or maybe a meeting.
asseblief:  Pronounced ah-sa-BLEEF.  The Afrikaans word for please, and used pretty broadly throughout the country, including in some places as a special plea.  A couple of PCVs in the northern part of the country have picked up, "Ah-saa-BLEEF, mon", as the thing to say when they want help, buy-in, or a slug of your drink.
aunty:  A term of respect for a woman over about 30 or 40.  There's a kapana seller in town who hollers, "Hello, aunty," to me when I walk past.
bakkie:  pick-up truck
biltong:  meat jerky, usually beef but sometimes game, ostrich, shark, goat etc.  I don't use this word a lot as a vegetarian, but boy are people in the US getting it for Christmas.  It's a big thing for Namibians.  Chili bites are especially popular in my area.
braai: (rhymes with fry) barbeque; sometimes wors and some roosterbrood; sometimes they throw most of a kudu (antelope, larger than a white-tailed deer), half a cow and a couple of goats on the grill.  A very common expression and event in the southern 75% of the country, and rarer in the northern, more densely-populated part, where stewing in a round iron pot over an open fire is a popular way to cook both every day and for special events.
chakalaka:  a vegetable compote, similar to ratatouille but with curry spices, that I buy in cans, 'mild and spicy' version, and eat with pap.
combi:  van, usually used to ferry paying passengers long distances or owned by a church, ministry or other organization that transports members or employees in groups of 10-15.
COS:  close of service; when a volunteer finishes a two-year (sometimes more) stint with Peace Corps.  Often celebrated with a COS trip before one heads back to the USA.
dankie:  actually straight Afrikaans for 'thank you'; in pretty common use throughout Namibia.
erf:  a number identifying the location of a plot of property; your house won't be '123 Farm Street,' it'll be ERF (or 'erven number') 3446, and no one else in town, or at least your neighbourhood, will have house number 3446.
flu:  a cold.  This one may be specific to my area; I'm not sure whether it's used broadly.  No one seems to know a word for the milder, commoner, not-dangerous irritation I call a cold, so when I had one I eventually stopped protesting that I didn't have influenza, and just started acknowledging my 'flu' as "a little one."
grenadilla:  passion fruit
hike:  hitchhike, usually paying for your ride in a private vehicle headed the same way you are.  This is the primary mode of 'public' transport, although in bigger towns there are licensed combis and taxis.
hike point:  the place where people gather in hope of getting a hike
ice:  can be ice, but you don't see a lot of that here, so it's more likely to be a kind of slushie treat, with sugar syrup, flavoring, water and vinegar poured into plastic sandwich bags.  The vinegar keeps it from freezing all the way through, so it reaches a kind of slurpy texture.
is it?:  Really?  Is that so?  As in, "He's going to Windhoek."  "Is it?"  "There's a sale at Pep."  "Is it?"  People usually emphasize the 'is' and draw out the 'it':  IS iiiit?
kapana:  stewed meat, usually sold as street food.
kooldrink  Soda popa, served cold.  Pine-nut flavour is not pignolias; it's pineapple and coconut.
meme:  Pronounced 'MAY-MAY'.  A woman or women, probably over 30.  It can be used as a term of respect; "Will you have kooldrink, meme?"  Also ma'am, mem and miss.  I have one client who always calls me Mem Frede.  Little kids usually call me Miss Frede, Miss or Teacher.
moro:  There are many variations on this word, all used to mean 'good morning' in different languages.  If you say, "Moro" or "Moro moro" to almost anyone, she or he will probably understand you to be offering a friendly greeting.  Unless it's after lunchtime, in which case she or he may be confused.

muhungu:  millet porridge.  Women and children of the northern part of Namibia may spend a lot of time pounding millet kernels into the coarse flour used to make cooked muhungu.
now:  sometime in the near future 
now now:  now, or maybe sometime in the nearer future
now now now:  really now, or at least the speaker has very good intentions
pap:  a white corn polenta that's a staple of the Namibian diet
PCN:  Peace Corps Namibia
PCV:  Peace Corps volunteer
PST:  pre-service training; PCN's two-month course in technical skills, language acquisition and cross-cultural living
roosterbrood:  from Afrikaans, roasted bread.  Just regular bread dough, pinched off roll-size and cooked on the braai, i.e., grilled over flames.  It's very tasty.  People often slather it with garlic butter.
SA:  South Africa, former 'administrator' of the Namibian territory, close neighbour and major trading partner.
shebeen: a bar, pub, saloon.  Sometimes a stand-alone, fully-licensed drinking emporium with bottled beer and a variety of harder liquors and a (usually not very good) sound system blasting beats; sometimes someone's back yard with an old, you-hope-well-scrubbed oil drum full of home-brew and a drunk guy cackling off-key in a corner; sometimes somewhere in between.  Hotels and fancy tourist towns have bars, not shebeens.
soccer:  soccer!  Most usage is British, so we have petrol and sweets instead of gas and candy (ha ha!), but the game the Brits call football is soccer to most Namibians.
tate:  Pronounced TAH-tay.  A term of respect for a man over about 40.  One of my PCV friends, a man of about 50, says that he has several times seen women, some quite elderly, kicked out of the shotgun seat in a taxi so that he, a tate, can sit in the best place.  His cultural tradition would have the elderly woman treated most deferentially, but he accepts that things are different here and takes his seat.
that side:  clear directions to places and identification of specific locations are not hugely popular here.  Most people are vaguer, saying "I live that side," and flapping a hand in the air.  One time when I asked Silas directions to the soccer field, she just grabbed a passing boy and told him to lead me there.  Lots of streets are nameless, and while most buildings have an erven number or erf, plenty of people don't know theirs.
that one:  People often don't use names when meeting, and you might know where someone lives, how many kids he has and what he does for work and still refer to him as 'that one.'  Also his wife, and all his neighbors.  "That one and that other one both live that side."
vol:  volunteer
what what:  and so forth; etcetera.  "We went to the store for milk and what what."  Sometimes expressed as 'what what what'.
wors:  the Afrikaans, and I think still the Dutch, word for sausage, used widely.  Boerwors, 'farmer sausage', is skinny and comes in a long coil that you braai in one of those clampy grill things so you can flip it without it uncoiling.  Per Wikipedia, boerwors has to be at least 90% meat.  Hmm.  Droewors is dry sausage, slightly different from biltong, which is un-ground meat dried.  There's lots of other worses, too.