South Africa Twenty-eight - Text
The subject is 21 years old, born in Johannesburg, South Africa. He is
currently a student at UCLA. He and his family moved to Irvine, CA when
he was ten and a half. He currently lives in Los Angeles, CA.
[INTERVIEWER: Tell me where you were born and a little bit about it]
Well I was born in Johannesburg in South Africa and then after 2 years of being brought up in Johannesburg, my parents moved to Witbank in South Africa which is an hour southeast I believe of southeast or southwest of Johannesburg and that's where I grew up for ten and a half years before moving to the United States. There's a huge mixture of...um...of just interactions between people because of how diverse the culture is. There's a very large African culture which is kind of obvious and they really
influence how um the white Africans go about their daily life. There are
also Afrikaaners which are the Dutch settlers that have that colonized the
country and their ancestors are so prevalent in the country. And then there
are also the British the uh British settlers who uh also spawned uh a huge
culture there. So there are all these different influences like with the
British accent as well as South Africa uh the Afrikaaner accent and the Zulu
accent that all influence how a South African dialect has kind of come about
and why it's so hard to place because of all the different um aspects of um...
all the different aspects of uh the how diverse the culture is.
[INTERVIEWER: Tell me a little more about the culture there]
The culture there's nothing like it here really I mean there is a South
African subculture here that is a little more um it's very it's a very
specific sub culture here so missing all the aspects of the culture there
like all the influences like there's just so many influences from other
countries and other um cultures that uh created a very diverse African
South African culture that I can't find anywhere here so its it's hard to
kind of get that satisfaction here with like you can only find it in South
Africa so it's one of the things I miss as well as my family.
Recorded by Aimee Karlin
Running time: 04:07