the increasing influence of American pop-culture around the world via modes of contact like television, American English has become more familiar in South Africa. Indeed, some American lexical items are becoming alternatives to comparable British terms. Varieties Black South African English Black South African English, or BSAE, is spoken by individuals whose first language is an indigenous African tongue. BSAE is considered a "new" English because it has emerged through the education system among second-language speakers in places where English is not the majority language. At least two sociolinguistic variants have been definitively studied on a post-creole continuum for the second-language Black South African English spoken by most Black South Africans: a high-end, prestigious "acrolect" and a more middle-ranging, mainstream "mesolect". The "basilect" variety is less similar to the colonial language (natively-spoken English), while the "mesolect" is somewhat more so. Historically, BSAE has been considered a "non-standard" variety of English, inappropriate for formal contexts and influenced by indigenous African languages. According to the Central Statistical Services, about 7 million black people spoke English in South Africa. BSAE originated in the South African school system, when the 1953 Bantu Education Act mandated the use of native African languages in the classroom. When this law was established, most of the native English-speaking teachers were removed from schools. This limited the exposure that black students received to standard varieties of English. As a result, the English spoken in black schools developed distinctive patterns of pronunciation and syntax, leading to the formation of BSAE. Some of these characteristic features can be linked to the mother tongues of the early BSAE speakers. The policy of mother tongue promotion in schools ultimately failed, and in 1979, the Department of Bantu Education allowed schools to choose their own language of instruction. English was largely the language of choice, because it was viewed as a key tool of social and economic advancement. BSAE has contrasting pronunciation and organization of vowels and consonants compared to the ones in standard English. For instance, “it lacks the tense/lax contrast and central vowels in the mesolectal variety.” Classification The difference between Black and White South Africans is based on their ethnic backgrounds, with them, as BSAE, being originally the first indigenous people that made a ''new'' English South Africa and developing speaking their tongue version of English and deciding not to speak South Africa's native language of English, which is mostly exclusive