The ‘Coloured’ connection of Namibian English

Abstract

Among the first English speakers in Namibia, South African Coloureds came to form an essential part of an ethnically fluid intermediate social class in colonial Namibia. This study seeks to pinpoint to what extent Coloured English varieties have been contributing to Namibian English and how much prestige is attached to them. To this end, this study simultaneously uses linguistic and perceptual data. One dataset consists of English phonetic data elicited from a representative urban sample of young Namibians. That dataset is analysed to establish what phonetic features mark out Coloured Namibian English varieties and to what extent they are found in other ethnolinguistic varieties and across social classes. The study then reports on a verbal guise experiment whose aim is to establish how young Namibians rate Coloured Namibian English varieties. Finally, the study analyses folk comments on Namibian English accents elicited from young Namibian focus groups. The study finds that, in terms of vowel realization patterns, Coloured Namibian English varieties sit in between White and Black Namibian English varieties, forming part of a continuum of which one extremity displays a White South African English imprint. The less ‘Afrikaans‐accented’ Coloured English varieties—associated with women—are developing middle‐class indexicalities. The fact that these varieties are targeted by young Black women and are perceived as ‘General Namibian English’, the study concludes, confirms that Namibian English is norm‐developing, as befits any Outer Circle variety. It is loosely tied to (South African) Inner Circle norms and has entered Phase 4 (‘endonormative stabilization’) of E. Schneider's Dynamic Model. The normative influence of Namibian Coloured English, the study argues, shows that the Dynamic Model needs fundamental adjustment to properly account for the role of non‐Europeans in Outer Circle dynamics.