Cape Flats English (abbreviated CFE) or Coloured English is the variety of

South African English South African English (SAfE, SAfEn, SAE, en-ZA) is the List of dialects of English, set of English language dialects native to South Africans. History British Empire, British settlers first arrived in the South African region in 1795, ...

spoken mostly in the

Cape Flats The Cape Flats () is an expansive, low-lying, flat area situated to the southeast of the central business district of Cape Town. The Cape Flats is also the name of an administrative region of the City of Cape Town, which lies within the larger geo ...

area of

Cape Town Cape Town is the legislature, legislative capital city, capital of South Africa. It is the country's oldest city and the seat of the Parliament of South Africa. Cape Town is the country's List of municipalities in South Africa, second-largest ...

. Its speakers most often refer to it as "broken English", which probably reflects a perception that it is simply inadequately-learned English, but, according to Karen Malan, it is a distinct, legitimate dialect of English. Cape Flats English is very close to

the Broad The Broad () is a contemporary art museum on Grand Avenue (Los Angeles), Grand Avenue in Downtown Los Angeles. The museum is named for philanthropists Eli Broad, Eli and Edythe Broad, who financed the $140 million building that houses the Broad ...

(or "Extreme") variety of White South African English. argues that the Respectable−Extreme (or "Cultivated−Broad") dichotomy can also be set up for CFE itself, with the former being used by the

middle class The middle class refers to a class of people in the middle of a social hierarchy, often defined by occupation, income, education, or social status. The term has historically been associated with modernity, capitalism and political debate. C ...

(whose L1 tends to be CFE) and the latter being used by the

working class The working class is a subset of employees who are compensated with wage or salary-based contracts, whose exact membership varies from definition to definition. Members of the working class rely primarily upon earnings from wage labour. Most c ...

(whose L1 tends to be the Cape Vernacular variety of

Afrikaans Afrikaans is a West Germanic languages, West Germanic language spoken in South Africa, Namibia and to a lesser extent Botswana, Zambia, Zimbabwe and also Argentina where there is a group in Sarmiento, Chubut, Sarmiento that speaks the Pat ...

). Not all speakers from Cape Flats speak this variety of English, with many speaking an accent similar to White South African English. Many develop accents because most television shows are American.

Grammar

Double negative A double negative is a construction occurring when two forms of grammatical negation are used in the same sentence. This is typically used to convey a different shade of meaning from a strictly positive sentence ("You're not unattractive" vs "You ...

s occur in the context of a co-occurring indefinite, as in "I didn't catch nothing". *

Calque In linguistics, a calque () or loan translation is a word or phrase borrowed from another language by literal word-for-word or root-for-root translation. When used as a verb, "to calque" means to borrow a word or phrase from another language ...

s from Afrikaans may occur, such as "I took that towel and I made me closed" (; standard English: ''(...) wrapped myself'').

Phonetics and phonology

References

Bibliography

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