Namlish, Namibia’s Mother Tongue

As the world celebrated International Mother Language Day on 21 February, we take a closer look at Namlish, which has played a significant unifying role as a bridge across the many languages Namibians speak – after all, speaking Namlish is nxa.

We mean, it is much easier to explain to your peers how your team was “hammered” in a game than having to giving a long explanation to make them understand the extent of the damage.

Then, of course, there is the “I will be there now-now” crowd who take forever to arrive kanti or hanakam, which means in actual fact, they are not even on their way yet.

Then there is chop-chop, which means very fast, or sies for when you have misbehaved or for something disgusting.

While linguists and language snobs may shudder at the use of mos, which is simply a filler or for emphasis, Namibians sommer use Namlish just because it is often the easiest to make people understand in a land where English is still a struggle.

Namlish is largely influenced by Afrikaans, which has many dialects from which plenty of slang varieties have developed, with Cape Town slang being the most popular, from where the world awetera was borrowed and used in Namibia to compliment something or greet friends.

However, in recent years, Namibians have built up their own colourful vocabulary, which has come to be known as Namlish, with a variety of phrases such as hoezit, vera – which are simply a greeting and asking how things are without prying, respectively.

With apartheid gone and Namibians mingling across racial lines, words from other languages are also incorporated, such as hakahana, meaning to hurry up, or the latest addition, /hasa, which has become a popular alternative to etse, which means “I see”.

While Namlish is yet to be recognised as an official language, it has found its way even into stuck-up boardrooms, where participants would often beg for a break because “Eish, this English is finishing us”, which usually means they would have spoken too much English.

In that same boardroom, you are also likely to hear phrases like “are we together?”, which means “do you understand so far” or “are you following”, or the use of “what what” instead of “among others” or “et cetera”, while those in a hurry will remind you that “the time is going”, meaning time is running out.

Namibian comedian Mark Kariahuua points out that Namlish is a way to communicate informally but directly.

“I think Namlish is a way for us to flip a narrative on a language that was not originally ours, but still make it original. For me, I know Namlish is a form of communicating in a cultural way that is cool, direct, sometimes nonsense but in a good way.

“And it’s transformed from being nxa to being a lifestyle. It’s one of those things that you get it or you don’t get it. It’s definitely part of who we are as Namibians.

“It’s a thing you do when having kapana; when you’re talking with your boys and what girls do when they’re hanging out. You have to a be a Namibian to know what Namlish is, it’s our thing, it’s our language, it’s our tone, it’s us taking control of our narrative, I think. Just keeping it real,” he says.

– unWrap.online

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