So what do "right now", "now", "now now", and "just now" actually mean?

My studies in Intercultural Communication are coming in handy when trying to understand and adapt to life here in South Africa, well, I thought it would.  All sorts of people with various European, India, Asian and African backgrounds live here, or have immigrated to this wonderful country.

 South Africa is a high context, polychronic culture, but it does have me someone confused because of its multi-ethnicity influence. For example, when it comes to "time", I expect a polychronic culture to be more event orientated, where schedules usually do  not driving the agenda the same way a monochronic culture such as the USA, Canada and Germany do. This being the case I should not be surprise that in South Africa they do not have 1 word to say " now" they have 4, and the one that really means now, doesn't have the word "now" in it.  There is the words: "right now", which essentially means, something will mostly likely happen pretty soon. Then there is "now", which seams to suggest that it almost might happen. Just to make sure you are not completely wondering what now really means, they add another now, and actually very often say: " now, now", which I think means that maybe most likely, really it will happen soon. The closest word to our meaning of "now" is "just now", which is the one we have learned to depend on.

All this makes us smile and we find ourselves basically wondering about when something might happen when someone say " now" :-)  My more relaxed french upbringing doesn't mind. Phil's German heritage background finds this a little more challenging ;-) 

 

I wonderful thing is that in this country people and time with people is VERY important. People walk you to the front door and wait until you drive out of the drive way until stepping back into the house, some of the polite people manners that many of our "in a hurry" cultures have stopped doing.   Our TeachBeyond South Africa team has been great and have been very patient with us. They are "aces" at  making us feel very welcomed here in our new home.

 

Talk to you now, now!

 

Tamera