Cape Flats English: phonology

Cape Flats English (CFE) originated in working class neighborhoods in innercity Cape Town. However, as a result of Apartheid social engineering, most of its speakers now live far from the city centre in a number of adjoining areas collectively known as ‘The Cape Flats’. (The name refers to a large, flat, sandy expanse bordered by mountain ranges and the sea.).

This variety of English is also sometimes called ‘Colored English’ but that term is problematic for two reasons. Firstly, it is an over-generalization: not all people who were classified as ‘Colored’ during the Apartheid era speak this dialect since they are not homogenous with regard to region and social class. Secondly, the term ‘Colored’ as a descriptor is not universally accepted by those to whom it has been applied. From the mid 19^th century, it was used to refer to people of mixed Asian, African, and European ancestry. A hundred years later, it was assigned by the Apartheid government to people who did not fit its two major population categories: ‘European’ or ‘white’, and ‘Bantu’ or ’black’. It was thus a catch-all category for people who did not constitute a group on any intrinsic grounds of shared ethnicity, culture or region. For this reason ‘colored identity’ is still a hotly debated concept. However, segregation did create some common ground which is of sociolinguistic significance because it minimized the possibility of intensive contact with speakers of other varieties of English. Members of each official population group were forced to spend most of their lives together in segregated residential areas, educational, leisure and other institutions.