lexical item
tramakasie
also: tramakassie, tramkassie, trammakassie, trama kassie
Thank you. The traditional expression of thanks in Cape Muslim Afrikaans, from Malay terima kasih. Community writers report it is now receding, increasingly displaced by the Arabic shukran and regarded by younger speakers as old-fashioned, heard more on the Cape Flats than in urban Muslim circles.
Where it comes from
No one person coined this.
It comes from Cape Muslim Afrikaans speakers of Cape Town. The record credits the speech community and the earliest citation that proves it, because Kaaps was made by a community over time and not in a moment anyone wrote down.
The record that can be verified is narrow and late: Davids's 1992 Lexikos word list is the earliest dated source read that prints the word. The word is far older than its documentation, inherited from the Malay in use at the Cape from the late eighteenth century, and it entered the written record long after it entered speech. It is very likely earlier attestations exist: earlier Cape Malay vocabulary compilations (Du Plessis 1939, Gerber 1957, Kahler 1971) are the obvious next place to look, but none was confirmed to print this word, so none is cited and the date is not moved. Note on the label: Cape Malay is a contested apartheid-era term, kept here only parenthetically and because Daniels uses it of her own community.
What changed on the way out
The unusual case in this dictionary: a word receding from the inside rather than being taken from outside. Daniels, writing as a community member, reports tramakassie being phased out in favour of the Arabic shukran, a shift she reads as socio-cultural, with younger speakers treating the word as old-fashioned and its use surviving on the Cape Flats more than in urban Muslim circles.
In use
Recorded means somebody said it and it was written down. Constructed means it was written here to show the shape of the word, and is an illustration rather than evidence.
- recorded
“Tramakassie.”
Thank you. The bare form, as glossed in Tasneem Daniels's 2021 glossary of Cape Malay expressions.
Tasneem Daniels, Aug 2021
- constructed
“Tramakassie vir die kos, Antie.”
Thank you for the food, Auntie.
The evidence
Community voices first, then the sources closest to the community. Press and dictionary citations are evidence about a word’s spread, not its origin.
- community explanationcommunity voice
Cape Malay-uitdrukkings, 'n Jawaab-glossary (LitNet, August 2021)
“Ek is sad om te se dat 'tramakassie' wod nou phased out en replaced deur die Arabiese equivalent 'shukran'”
- scholarshipcommunity voice
Achmat Davids, 'Some Lexical Aspects of Cape Muslim Afrikaans', Lexikos 2 (1992), 39 to 62
“tramakasie [tramakasi], Malayu = terima kasih, thank you”
- scholarship
Something wrong here? Correct it. Corrections from speakers of a variety take precedence over anything recorded here.