The third day of the April A to Z Blogging Challenge combining stories about my Lego photographer friend Dabelle and a South African word.

Why South African words?

Two reasons. One is that I am leaving SA soon to go and live back in England. I’ve lived here for almost 18 years and I’ve picked up a fair amount of the local slang and way of speaking. So this is a way to celebrate my favourite words. The other is that even though South Africans speak English, it isn’t always understandable. As one South African website says:

South Africans speak English, but that doesn’t mean you’ll always understand us. Our “robots” are nothing like R2D2, “just now” doesn’t mean immediately, and “babbelas” is not a shampoo. 

If you read yesterday’s post, you already know what a babbelas is!

   Chinwagging with my Chinas

Dabelle is always ready to make friends with folk who are different to her, even though she is almost always smaller than them. I caught her having a chinwag with her chinas, Otto and Danni-boy.  From the looks on their faces though, she seems to be holding court and they cannot get a word in edgeways!

Have you heard the word “chinwag” before?

It’s basically a long and pleasant conversation between friends and so very descriptive! My mom used to use it often and I just remembered it when I was thinking about words that start with C for today.

The South African word of the day

china: “good friend”. It’s one of the few Cockney rhyming slang words to survive in South Africa, coming from “china plate” = “mate”.

See you all tomorrow, my chinas!

Proudly part of the 

To read all my A to Z posts, click on the Dibzen-AtoZChallenge tag.