Netflix star Jemma Durrant's parents still speak fluent "South African" at home in Calabasas - from braais and robots to the infamous "now-now". Here's the glossary her American neighbours definitely need.
Jemma in episode 108 of Calabasas Confidential. Picture: Netflix
Netflix’s Calabasas Confidential has introduced American audiences to a lot of things: lavish mansions, dramatic dinner parties, and now, South African slang.
Jemma Durrant, the South African-born breakout star of the reality series and daughter of Brett and Athene Durrant, recently posted a video with her parents that’s doing the rounds online for an entirely different reason from the show’s usual drama.
In it, the family runs through a list of South Africanisms that have followed them all the way to Calabasas – much to the confusion, and occasional doubt, of their American neighbours.
For South Africans, the clip is a nostalgic reminder of home. For everyone else, it’s basically a crash course in a language within a language.
The braai, the bakkie and the cool drink
It starts, fittingly, with food and fun. A “cool drink” is simply a soft drink or soda, while a “braai” is South Africa’s answer to the American barbecue, though locals would argue it’s a far more sacred ritual than that comparison suggests.
Then there’s the “bakkie”, which had the Durrants stumped on how to explain it simply. In American terms, it’s a pickup truck, and “I drive a big, big bakkie” makes complete sense to any South African.
Petrol, naturally, becomes “gas” for Calabasas consumption, and a “jol” (a word that does a lot of heavy lifting in South African English) translates loosely to a good time or a party.
Tackies, slops and costumes
South Africans have their own vocabulary for, it seems, almost anything you can put on your feet or body. “Takkies” are sneakers, while “slops” (sometimes spelt “slip-slops”) are flip-flops, essential braai-day footwear. And in a twist that trips up a lot of Americans, what South Africans call a “costume” is simply a swimsuit.
Robots, “now-now” and other concepts that defy translation
Some South Africanisms aren’t really about vocabulary at all; they’re about an entirely different relationship with time and infrastructure.
Take “robot”, which has nothing to do with machinery and everything to do with traffic lights. Then there’s the notoriously confusing trio of “now”, “just now” and “now-now” – a distinction the Durrant family admits even most South Africans struggle to properly explain.
As they put it: “now-now” means sooner than “just now”, but it’s still no fixed time frame at all. It’s vaguer than “soon” and somehow more urgent than “later,” basically, science has yet to pin it down.
The words that just feel good to say
Then there are the words South Africans use simply because no English equivalent quite captures the vibe. “Lekker” means nice, cool or great, depending on context, while “kiff” is its cooler, more clipped cousin.
“How’s it?” is a casual hello rather than an actual question requiring an answer, and “you’re being ugly” doesn’t refer to anyone’s appearance; it’s a way of calling someone nasty or badly behaved. And then there’s “sis”, an all-purpose exclamation of disgust that, as Jemma’s mom puts it, works a lot like saying “Jesus” in English.
