Well, again to be fair, the Afrikaner, generally speaking, is in fact a very courteous and polite individual. Mandela commented on this point when he was spirited out of Victor Verster prison to meet PW Botha in 1989. He expected a “grim, cantankerous figure”, but was instead met by “a charming man indeed…unfailingly courteous and friendly”. (The State of Africa - Meredith)
As for the pronunciation, the first e in “Engelsman” is pronounced “eh” like in “eh, what?” or “eh” as in “dead”. The second e is pronounced as the i in “tin”. In “Ingilsman” both the first and second i is pronounced as in “tin”.
Maybe calling it an “insult” is too harsh. It’s more like an “impolite” term, the same as the word Boer. Technically a boer is a farmer, but it is also a word describing the Afrikaners in the Anglo-Boer era. It is from this same era that the Ingilsman term seems to have originated.
To call an Afrikaner a Boer is considered impolite, so too an Afrikaner calling an Englishman an Ingilsman. Both are a tad loaded.
Fair enough. One of the children Mrs M minds is South African, and her grandad Cecil is extremely amiable. I’ll bear in mind that the B-word would be… boorish.
Mandela’s impression of Botha is a surprising one for the time, though, I must admit. Considering what each man represented at the time, and all that.
