Hi Blood

While I am often annoyed at the level of English in South Africa, especially where it can effect efficiency and effectivity, I am also fascinated by some of the words we use.

In English we are used to biro meaning pen, scotch meaning cellotape and hoover meaning vacuum cleaner but as a white South African I miss much:

"high blood" is even used in the INTERNET e-commerce for a herbal remedy for hypertension

"checkers" for a plastic bag and brilliant advertising for checkers

"look up and runs" for packets of chicken head and feet

"zo zo" for a small room in the back yard of a house

"hippo" for the round roofed township house

just a few really interesting words, but there must be thousands - send them in and I'll start a Colloquial South Africa Website and publish if we get enough.

By the way a look at the web shows many lists, but to me mainly uninteresting Afrikaans based slang - I am sure there's something much more interesting out there.

• http://www.capeoptions.com/slang.htm
• http://members.virtualtourist.com/m/tt/634bf/
• http://www.answers.com/topic/list-of-south-african-slang-words
• http://www.peevish.co.uk/slang/links.htm
• http://www.southafrica.info/plan_trip/travel_tips/questions/saenglish.htm
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_South_African_slang_words
• http://www.southafrican.za.net/sa-slang.html