deurmekaar

[balakrishnanijk]

Is it OK to use deurmekaar in written English?

 

[Barb_D]

It's not an English word and I have no idea what it means.

 

[5jj]

It would appear to be acceptable in Sout African English. It certainly is not in BrE. I had never heard of it, either.

Urban Dictionary: deurmekaar

 

[balakrishnanijk]

Would I be considered sub-standard if I used it in writing? Of course, I am not American,British or South African.

 

[bhaisahab]

Would I be considered sub-standard if I used it in writing? Of course, I am not American,British or South African.

I should think most people would consider it unintelligible.

 

[Tdol]

Oxford say it is informal, so if you were writing an informal email to a South African friend, it would probably be fine. If you wrote it in a job application in the US or UK, it would probably ensure that your application went into the bin. It's an informal word used in one variant, so it's probably better only to use it in that country informally if you're desperate to use it, and leave it out elsewhere.

Definition for deurmekaar - Oxford Dictionaries Online (World English)

 

[balakrishnanijk]

Well, that reminds me of an important thing that you have to keep in mind when you learn English in a country where the language is not spoken natively and where there are not many native speakers. Being an Indian foreign learner, I am exposed to a lot of English on the Internet and in print and I often write down and learn new words and expressions whenever I stumble upon them without bothering to check whether a particular word or expression belongs to British or American or Australian English. I read newspapers and news websites from the US, the UK, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and so on and pick up whatever I find interesting and/or informative. India, although it has the largest number of non native English- speaking population, is not a safe guide when it comes to correct English. And what is more, in my whole endeavor to improve the quality of English, the sole signpost has been the monolingual learner's dictionary and you wouldn't be able to check the register of every new word that surfaces at the time of reading and surfing the Net and naturally, you tend to guess the meaning of words from the context or from its associations with other words. And this points to yet another aspect of English language learning. Should we restrict ourselves to learning a particular dialect of English or should we plump for an international variety of English that incorporates words and pronunciations from different dialects across the world. Furthermore, no dialect of English is an island: there is no pure variety of British or American or Australian English. Ever since the burgeoning of the Internet revolution and birth of globalization, different dialects of English have exerted a lot of influences on one another and it is highly likely that this situation will continue in the future as well. With a couple of learner's dictionaries nearby and newspapers and news websites readily available online, it would not be too difficult for the foreign learner to become proficient at different varieties of English at the same time but his vocabulary and pronunciation would not be restricted to a particular region. He would be both catholic and eclectic.

 

[BobK]

A few Afrikaans borrowings marked by an '-aa-' spelling (such as 'Afrikaans', 'kraal', and 'aardvark' [+ a few others]) made it into English, but with essential connotations of South African-ness. Others, such as 'baas' had their spelling naturalized [="boss"]. The '-aa-' suggests to me that deurmekkar might be a South African word, but it means nothing to me.

b