You said what?

Being in South Africa, and I suppose this is true of being in any other country which uses English as a main language, reveals some fascinating language differences. For example South Africans commonly express things with a negative whereas we would use a positive. So in a Church service I’d say ‘will you please sit down’, but here in Jubilee you are more likely to hear,  ’won’t you sit down’ to which which I have an overwhelming urge, so far resisted, to shout, ‘ No’!  Then there is the use of the word now. In South Africa you have to differentiate between now now which means immediately or just now which could be any time from here to the end of your life. So if someone tells you, ‘I’m going to take you out for a delicious steak just now’, don’t get too excited, it could be a long time before it happens. What you are looking for is a now now steak; that’s worth getting excited about. Then there is the confusing use of the word couple which of course for us in the UK always means two, but in South Africa seems to mean anything from 2 to 3,000 (if not more). For a couple to tell you that they have a couple of children can be extremely confusing. How many are in this relationship and how many children do they actually have? So if a husband and wife tell you that they are coming round for a meal just now, with a couple of their children, you haven’t really got a clue as to how many are coming or when they will turn up. It reminds me of the time when years ago as a very young Pastor an American told me that they were all coming round for coffee. I was expecting the entire church, but actually it was only the one guy with his wife!

Steve van Rhyn has a quite delightful stock of phrases which he uses when preaching. For example in Steve’s vocabulary people never arrive, they ‘rock-up’. And where we would speak of someone being ‘top of the pile’ Steve uses the far more descriptive phrase of ‘top of the log’. In the UK we are fairly familiar with certain catch phrases that seem to be popular for a time. So  a few years back we were ‘kick starting’ all sorts of things and more recently we’ve all been trying ‘to sing from the same hymn sheet’, which is strange really as in NewFrontiers we never do sing from a hymn sheet! Mind you within NewFrontiers we also have our stock phrases, the chief of which is we are in transition (If I had a pound for every time…….!). There is also the highly descriptive phrase sometimes used these days for referring to someone we may be a bit concerned about that ‘he’s one sandwich short of a picnic.’ Which brings me to my all time favourite expression here in South Africa. A few weeks ago a lovely lady here in Cape Town was referring to someone she was a bit concerned about asking me whether I thought ‘his cheese was slipping off his cracker.’ Beat that!

So last Sunday I was preaching at Langebaan on the West Coast and once again found myself in the midst of language differences as they have repeat meetings on a Sunday now ( which has almost become a NewFrontiers value), the first service is in Afrikaans and the second in English. However they let me preach both times in English as they reckoned that my Afrikaans wasn’t up to much. Mind you I do know the Afrikaans word ‘lekker’ which means ‘really good’ and is a word almost universally used over here even by those who only speak English. So we had a really lekker time with the church - one I’ve visited reguarly over the last 11 years.

I believe I’ve mentioned before that we belong to a very stimulating Lifegroup (depending on your context understand at this point; small group, cell group, home group, focus group, action group, growth group or ‘what on earth are they calling them now’ group). Well, last week we were discussing Terry Virgo’s sermon from the week before. The splendid Herma Adams, wife of church Elder Dave Adams, was saying how much she had appreciated what Terry has said about being fervent in prayer from the story of Elijah who had fought the prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel and how he had built the altar and poured water all over the alter. In fact Herma went into great detail for about 5 minutes on all of this causing in me a rising sense of panic. I simply hadn’t heard Terry describing Elijah building the altar and pouring water on etc, etc. Was I fast asleep while Terry was saying this - after all I had only got back from Dubai the night before. Did I snore as I was asleep or had I simply blanked out. Was I losing my memory even. So eventually I could take it no longer and stopped Herma by exclaiming, I just can’t remember Terry saying any of that. ‘Oh no, he didn’t,’ she said,’ I was just having a bit of a preach myself.’ I then discovered that Sue was having exactly the same thoughts as me and was also on the edge of a panic attack thinking she had completely lost it too while listening to Terry. Anyway we were both greatly relieved as we had really thought for a few minutes that the cheese was slipping off our crackers.

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