Words and Phrases from the play

On this page, I’ve place links to pronunciations of the “non-standard” English words found in Master Harold...and the Boys, words of Afrikaans origin or of African (Zulu or Xhosa) origin, place names and character names. I had them spoken for me by my friend and colleague Judylee Vivier, who grew up in South Africa, but how now lives and teaches voice in Brooklyn. [In editing the clips, a couple of seconds has been added on after where I intended each one to end, so you get a little “um” or a bit of a sentence that I had meant to leave out...]

Boet—means "brother" and is pronounced [but]. Colloquial, similar to “bro” when used on its own.

"Ag no man"— “Ag” could be spelled “Ach!” in another spelling tradition: it’s just a noise, like “OH”

Ja! — Afrikaans for “Yes”. Always said very low, in the chest

"She makes me the hell-in too much" — “The hell-in" is something along the lines of “Angry”. One can say “I am the hell-in about this!”


"Haaikona, Boet Sam, it is not funny." — In Bantu languages, either Zulu or Xhosa. An expression like a contradiction, i.e. a strong negation, like NO!

Mr. Malopo — no recording, sorry, but stress is on the second syllable maLOpo

I donner you, Sam! Struesgod! — donner: hit, strike; struesgod: as true as God


As they act out the dancing contest, Sam announces the names of the contestants. Note that almost all of them have stress on the penultimate (second last) syllable. For “Nchinga” and “Nkonyeni”, think of the initial N as its own syllable. For “Njikelane”, it starts with the “nya, nya, nya” teasing sound, made with the top surface of the tongue.

Welcome Tchabalala
Mulligan Njikelane
Nomhle Nkonyeni — note the voiceless L at the end of “Nomhle”, said like a lateral lisp (like “sufferin’ succotash” )
Norman Nchinga
Fats Bokolane
Dina Plaatjies
Sipho Dugu
Mable Magada

Note that in his speech “A Catholic Antigone”, Fugard tells the story of a group of actors in Port Elizabeth coming to talk to him after returning from the first international tour of his play “The Blood Knot”, and he mentions their names. Many of them are the same as the names listed by Sam! (Go to the 0:08:00 mark to hear this part of the story). I have recorded this portion of the video: you can hear the names here.

Grahamstown ( “gray-ums-town” )
Peddie ([ˈpɛdi]?)

About Xhosa & Afrikaans

XHOSA
From Wikipedia: The Xhosa (pronounced [ǁʰɔsɑ] ( listen)) people are speakers of Bantu languages living in south-east South Africa, and in the last two centuries throughout the southern and central-southern parts of the country.

Xhosa-speaking peoples are divided into several subgroups with related but distinct heritages. The main subgroups are the Bhaca, Bomvana, Mfengu, Mpondo, Mpondomise, Xesibe, and Thembu[1]. The name "Xhosa" comes from that of a legendary leader called uXhosa. There is also a theory that the word xhosa derives from a word in some Khoi-khoi or San language meaning "fierce" or "angry", the amaXhosa being the fierce people. The Xhosa refer to themselves as the amaXhosa and to their language as isiXhosa.
Presently approximately 8 million Xhosa people are distributed across the country, and Xhosa is South Africa's second most common home language, after Zulu, to which Xhosa is closely related. The pre-1994 apartheid system of bantustans denied Xhosas South African citizenship and attempted to confine them to the nominally self-governing "homelands" of Transkei and Ciskei, now both a part of the Eastern Cape Province where most Xhosa remain. Many Xhosa live in Cape Town (iKapa in Xhosa), East London (iMonti), and Port Elizabeth (iBhayi).
As of 2003 the majority of Xhosa speakers, approximately 5.3 million, lived in the Eastern Cape, followed by the Western Cape (approximately 1 million), Gauteng (671,045), the Free State (246,192), KwaZulu-Natal (219,826), North West (214,461), Mpumalanga (46,553), the Northern Cape (51,228), and Limpopo (14,225).[2]

AFRIKAANS
From Wikipedia: Afrikaans is a South African language originating from the Dutch spoken by settlers in Africa in the seventeenth century.[2] Despite the fact that Afrikaans developed in Africa and is unique to the region, it is classified as Low Franconian West Germanic due to the fact that it originates from Dutch. Aside from English, Afrikaans deviates the farthest from the grammars of the other Germanic languages.[3] It is mainly spoken in South Africa and Namibia. It is the primary language used by two ethnic groups in South Africa: the Afrikaans people (Afrikaners) and the Coloureds (in Afrikaans: kleurlinge or bruinmense–including Basters, Cape Malays and Griqua).
Afrikaans is the majority language of the western third of South Africa (Northern and Western Cape, in which it is spoken at home by 68% and 55% of the population, respectively[5]). It is also the most common first language in the adjacent southern third of Namibia (Hardap and Karas, where it is the first language of 44% and 40% of the population, respectively).