ABSTRACT
'South African English' (SAE) is an enormously complex and grossly under-described dialect cluster, comprising both mother-tongue and L2 varieties. 2 Among the mother-tongue group, due in part to South Africa's idiosyncratic social and political history, there are a number of distinct 'ethnic' (euphemism for 'racial') dialect-continua, each with its own intricate social stratification: primarily White, 'Coloured', and Indian. While much useful work has been done on the overall profile of the White English speaking community, especially from a sociolinguistic point of view, there is as yet little of a systematic nature available on either Coloured or Indian English. 3 Unless otherwise specified, 'SAE' in this paper = White SAE.
