Opinion Column

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The Queens English
My parents first moved to Abu Dhabi in 1999. It wasn’t my moms first time outside of South Africa, before moving, they travelled around Europe but my dad was her personal translator, from ordering her meals to asking how much something cost. His English wasn’t perfect either but he knew more than her. 

When my mom was a child, she learned English in school but the teachers spoke “Very high English, the queens English” as she describes it. She said that it was difficult for her to follow along and speak the way they would. Out of 50 countries, South Africa is ranked the lowest in the Progress in International Reading Literacy Studies. In South Africa nowadays, an abundance of children still struggle with learning English. Internationally, 4% of students around the world were unable to reach the lowest literary benchmark, in contrast with South Africa where 78% of the children were unable to reach the benchmark. 

  My mom’s aunt was a teacher and offered to give her extra English lessons but my mom refused to take them. She said that she didn’t want to be embarrassed and humiliated in front of her family since her cousins could speak perfect English and she was unable to. 

When they moved to Abu Dhabi my mom was introduced to a few other Afrikaans speaking women whose husbands worked with my dad. One of the ladies names was Louise and she was an English South African, meaning she could understand and speak some Afrikaans but was brought up speaking English. My mom really liked her and they became best friends but there was the language barrier between them. My mom told me that she would speak Afrikaans to her and she would reply in English to my mom. Louise taught my mom English, they would watch English movies together and my mom started reading English books. Once she started learning basic English, she would code-switch between English and Afrikaans when talking to my dad or Louise. She told me that the reading helped her a lot when it came to learning English and she would learn new words every day. Although my mom had an accent when speaking English, she was eventually able to help herself when it came to going out in public. 


Today my mom is a learning assistant for a grade 1 teacher and she speaks English every single day. When she talks to my brother, my dad or I, she still code-switches sometimes or she asks for help with a word but she can speak English excellently. 

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