At the end of the Day… a la Naas Botha

Daily Prompt: No, Thank You

by michelle w. on June 22, 2013

If you could permanently ban a word from general usage, which one would it be? Why?

Photographers, artists, poets: show us NO.

________________________________________

I am sorry, but this post will probably only be understood by my fellow Saffas, and some of the British Commonwealth nations who play rugby.

It was triggered by this: in a few minutes our national team, the Springboks, will take on Samoa at Loftus in Pretoria, in the beautiful gentleman’s game of rugby.  Not that silly stuff that Aussies play in Aussie Rules, and not that other silly game that the rest of the world want to play in Rio soon with round balls…  Especially not that American game where you need a knights armor suit to go on the field. No, plain old rugby…

Well, there is this one South African who some people see as a legend in the game. His name is Naas Botha, and he was a long time ago a flyhalf who could kick really well, but could not tackle worth a damn. This gentleman is the but of many jokes, and our nation’s prankster, Leon Schuster, loves to portray him in his movies.

Naas Botha is a television commentator at Supersport these days. You usually, like today, will see him on the panel discussing the game during halftime, as well as the post mortem at the final whistle.  His English did improve a lot. But he started saying something, that you will now hear ALL South African rugby players echo in post match interviews. It is not a word as such, but a phrase…  You will hear it at the end of nearly every sentence by the boys from the Orange Free State- the Cheetahs, for whom English really is torture.  Much more than for me!

It is this phrase: At the end of the day…

A famous rugby couch echoes Naas regularly: At the end of the day, looks (sic) at the score board…

The interview with a Bloemfontein boytjie who were made man of the match after a Super 15 game:  “At the end of the day… ugh, ugh, oom weet, ugh… I played lekker… so at the end of the day we beat them up because our coach said to keep it tight at the end of the day. So, you know (the other phrase in this category) hey (ditto) at the end of the day we won. Né oom. It was very lekker, and now we are going to celebrate at the end of the day…”

For all you who doesn’t know the word yet: “LEKKER” means it is very nice/good/awesome/fantastic/ orgasmic/ delicious/ tasty/ all of the above and more. It is the one Afrikaans word accepted in our version of English in South Africa, and all our expats of whatever mother tongue uses it. It is just not possible to translate into one English word, you need a lot. And it is very lekker to say lekker. So that is the one word I would like to add to international English/ At the end of the day, you know, hey?

Images of Naas Botha:

rugbydecuyo.com.ar

I do not think this is Naas Botha, but the picture did come up in Google… I 

This is the dude today, at the end of the day…

pessimistincarnate.blogspot.com

And now, like all middle aged white South African Afrikaans speaking males  I have to hurry to attend the kickoff whistle, due to start at 17h15 GMT + 2…  Have a good Saturday, wherever you are, at the end of the day…