Here’s a public service announcement that’s been a long time coming.
Young people over the age of 16: if you have the slightest suspicion that a woman is not Afrikaans, DON’T. CALL. HER. TANNIE. And especially not if you can clearly hear her speaking English.
Ek weet, ek weet…jy’s grootgemaak met maniere and this is an argument that I’ve heard with many young Afrikaans-speakers in my quarter century in SA. But it’s time to clear up a cultural misunderstanding. You see, to an English person – and a handful of Afrikaans women – ‘tannie’ isn’t simple nomenclature: the word carries cultural nuances, judgements and multi-layered psychology, worthy of several academic theses.
In a nutshell, you’re insulting the recipient.
No insult to the genuine aunts who speak Afrikaans, but one must understand that English speakers have long used the term as a mild slur. A ‘tannie’ in the South African Englishlexicon of insults is someone who is extremely conservative (and never in a complimentary way). She epitomises a woman lacking fashion sense; a woman who wears her hair in a bolla in order to be as sexless as possible; her lips are permanently pursed in moral outrage at everything around her and she last had fun in 1965. As one friend put it to me, “Tannies are feeble and meek. I’m fierce…”
In short, to most English speaking women, a Tannie is everything the modern woman would not want to be.
What do you use instead? Mrs X, Ms, Ma’am. Or her first name if she’s invited you to use it.
And your defence that it’s good manners? Credit to you for striving for courtesy in our modern age of self-absorption. You’re a good person and your parents no doubt thought they were teaching you well, perhaps based on their assumption that their immediate, known world comprises one dominant culture and it is therefore a respectful title.
Save it for family Sundays, if you’re in doubt, otherwise you’re in severe danger of unexpected animosity. If you’re a waiter? Best not. You’ll want your tip.
Now that you know better, you can do better, nê?
You’re welcome.
