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As a native Afrikaans speaker I would agree with the p-oi-kee pronunciation.

Lekker, meaning very nice or pleasant:

Lack-kir
(pronounced like sir)

A ver interesting and entertaining topic

One often encountered is Baie dankie (thank you very much) Just think of "Buy a donkey"

Some of the new names given to towns are also difficult to pronounce correctly. For Instance - Warmbaths?Warmbad which is now Bela Bela.
This is not pronounced as in the Italian - Bella Bella - but as Beh la Beh la (or thereabouts!) In the local language (Pedi) it means something like "bubbling water" but "bella bella" is actually an extremely rude swear word!
Confusion, she reigns

There was once a book published called, Aah big yaws. It caused great merriment. It was on seth efriken inglish as she ees spoke.

the direct translation of Aah big yaws.. is, I beg your pardon..

like the words.. ahg shame men.. it is said on a variety of occasions.

as is siss, or sies.. usually an expression of disgust.

VERY VERY cool topic.

Yah well no fine
Nice thread . Us Saffies do sometimes even confuse ourselves with language .
Take for instance Houtbaai here in the Cape . The meaning thereof is woodbay . English speakers pronounce it
houtbay , but correctly should be pronounced like boat therefore -hoatbay - .
Also Muizenberg ( mousemountain ) , with the Muize almost pronounced like "haze " , but our english friends calling it Mewzenberg .

Okie,how about Worcester?

great thread!

Maroela = Ma-ru-la (all short closed vowel sounds)
Tsokwane = Cho(short closed sound)-kwa-ne

The difficulty for English pronouncing these names is the open vowel sounds. English has round vowels. Like safe = say-f. The 'a' sound goes up as the mouth opens then down as it closes to make a round tone. To pronounce these Kruger names keep your mouth in one shape as you pronounce the vowel and keep the sound short.
Did that make any sense?

Hoedspruit ...
Although there are two vowels next to each other(oe), in Afrikaans this is one singular sound as in 'who'. But now take out the 'wh' and put an 'h'. who-d-spr-ay-t.

Just saw this interesting thread.
In the local vernacular the correct pronunciation for Biyamiti is Bee-a-meet. The i at the end is dropped.
Tshokwane is pronounced Choc-waan. Again, the e at the end is dropped.

Written by the best English teacher one could ever have had, Robin Malan. He made things so interesting and must take most of the credit for the reasonable English I communicate in. I still remember some of his tips.

He asked the class for some examples to put in the book, and one of mine was "He threw me with a stone".

Hoedspruit. Hood sprate. Literal translation is hat stream.

nice topic

Another one that is quite taxing on our visitors is Machadodorp. Our U.K. client always refer to it as Mack-a-doo-dorp, which is rather cute

How about the game park hluhluwe.. my german guests always pronounced it haloo haloo we
It should really be pronounced with the hl as ll as in the welsh language but for those who cant they pronounce it shla shloowe is good enough

This may turn out to be one of the most helpful threads ever

Now if someone could help this girl with an American-ish accent pronouce pretty much every place name in KTP, (thus saving me much future humiliation), i'd be hugely thankful...