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by happypants23 2315 days ago
I'm a techie living in Cape Town and I love it. I have no plans to emigrate. We have problems down here yes, but they've been no impediment to my career.

Both Amazon AWS and Oracle OCI have satellite development offices in Cape Town, and if anything they are hiring more and more.

1 comments

Are they still having the rolling brown-outs in Cape Town? My hubby's family were getting a bit gatvol of those a while back, telling everybody here in New Zealand all about it.
gatvol?
Others have explained, but I found it funny to read this word. My native language is Dutch (flemish variety) and I would also read this word as expressing a negative emotion (fed up sounds right). "gat" = dialect/slang for ass, "vol" = full.
> Adjective. (South Africa, slang) Completely fed up; very upset.
Speaking as a South African, still living here.

gatvol = "fed up"

It disappoints me that so many fellow South Africans are seemingly oblivious to the audience they are interacting with and casually use local slang regardless.

When I saw it I guessed it was some local slang, and I was excited to learn what it meant from someone who really knew rather than some online dictionary. I don't think it should be a disappointment, it contributes to the wonderful diversity of language.
As a Brit, likewise - and the context of this thread is fairly, well, South African.
Reading South African as a Dutch person is always great. I understand most of the words, but it’s still clearly a completely different language/context.

Gatvol = hole is full

When I learnt Dutch is came is a surprise that ‘opgewonde’ does not mean excited.

I told many an executive at KPN that I was opgewonde to work on their project. :)

Apparently Google Translate hasn't had the epiphany that you did yet. What does it mean? :)
More specifically, in this word gat would mean ass.
As a non-South African, it's always great to learn local slang from around the world. On forums such as HN or Reddit, there's always someone around to explain it means. It's never an impediment to understanding the point being made.
Jislaaik. Don't skrik bokkie.
I’m not South African, my husband is. I picked it up from him. We use it around our home quite a bit. I was replying to a South African. Whilst talking about South Africa. I'm fairly sure nobody's upset about it, more intrigued.