2019 Article Excerpt- "Sheng: How A Kenyan Urban Vernacular Language Is Gaining National Acceptance"

Edited by Azizi Powell

This pancocojams post is part of an ongoing series about Kenya's Sheng language.

The content of this post is presented for cultural and linguistic purposes.

All copyrights remain with their owners.

Thanks to Eric Gatobu, the author of this article and all others who are quoted in this article.  

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Thanks also to my good friends Lucas & Judith who are Luos from Kenya. From the late 1990s to 2014 Lucas was the  technical mastermind for my cultural website cocojams. Without Lucas, there would not have been a cocojams, pancocojams, or any other internet site that I curate. Thank you so  much!

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Click http://pancocojams.blogspot.com/2015/05/an-introduction-to-kenyas-sheng.html for a 2015 pancocojams article about Sheng whose title is "An Introduction To Kenya's Sheng Language &  Kenya's "Mchongoano" Insult Jokes". Additional pancocojams posts about Sheng can be found by clicking the "Sheng" tag below.

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ARTICLE EXCERPT:  SHENG: HOW A KENYAN URBAN VERNACULAR IS GAINING NATIONAL ACCEPTANCE

https://medium.com/@ericgatobu/sheng-how-a-kenyan-urban-vernacular-is-gaining-national-acceptance-39683045ad94  Sheng: How a Kenyan urban vernacular is gaining national acceptance

Eric Gatobu, May 20, 2019

Earlier this month on Labour Day, a Kenyan Member of Parliament electrified a public gathering and Kenyans online when he used his opportunity to speak at the live televised event to showcase his apparent mastery of the Sheng language.

Joshua Kutuny, a 41-year-old MP for Cherengany Constituency in Kenya’s Rift Valley region reignited a long-running conversation about the status of Sheng in formal spaces. The rarity of such an occurrence in Sheng usage had a local newspaper stating that he had just taken Sheng ‘to a whole new level’.

Sheng (an acronym for Swahili-English slang) originated from among the urban underclass of Nairobi as a constantly evolving linguistic code based on Swahili and English and largely influenced by many vernacular languages spoken in the multicultural Kenyan capital such as Dholuo, Luhya, Kikuyu and Kikamba.

Tracing its roots from colonial Kenya where there was a heightened incidence of rural-urban migration, Sheng has evolved from its initial use as a vehicular language for new urban dwellers drawn from different regions to a vernacular of an appreciable number of people born in and after the 1980s according to Dr Aurélia Ferrari, a sociolinguistics researcher.

Sheng’s classification is highly contested in a number of competing views about its nature. While sometimes fronted as pidgin, Sheng originated in areas with already established lingua francas — English and Swahili. Sheng also differs from creoles in the sense that it is not exactly the main language of the majority of its speakers and neither does it draw from one dominant language.

Dr Mokaya Bosire, a Linguistics professor at the University of Oregon disputes the classification of Sheng as mere code-switching as in the case of what can be called ‘Swahili of Nairobi’ (or ‘Swanglish’ in Tanzania) or even as an urban dialect of Swahili based on a markedly different structure and geographical spread.

“Sheng is not localized into a particular geographical area and Sheng speakers span the many urban centres of Kenya unlike being congregated in Nairobi, the cradle.”

Bosire offers a more encompassing classification of Sheng as a hybrid language owing to its synthesis of varied elements of several languages to create a new linguistic-cultural composite product.

Negative Connotations

What is not in contention, however, is Sheng’s unassailed rise in popularity over the years and a seemingly growing acceptance of this code in spaces formerly deemed too formal for its use. This is despite an enduring negative connotation associated with Sheng as a language for the uneducated, unsophisticated, poor troublemakers from the ‘hood’.

Duncan Ogweno (or Dunky in Sheng), a force to be reckoned with in the gradual institutionalisation of Sheng, and the founder of GoSheng Services, the foremost curator of the Sheng language and culture for over the last three decades observes that the negative connotations associated with Sheng have persisted over the decades.

“The stigma associated with Sheng is pretty much enduring and that is largely because of stereotypes borne and cemented by people of means.”

[…]

In 2002, when Kenya was gearing up for a momentous regime change, the collective optimistic disposition of Kenyans was encapsulated in one Sheng word — Unbwogable. A witty song by the duo Gidi Gidi and Maji Maji which was co-opted by the then National Rainbow Alliance (Narc) as its campaign anthem embodying its message of an unstoppable march into a new dawn in Kenyan leadership. Unbwogable’s lyrics reflected the true nature of Sheng, an amalgam of English, Swahili and other Kenyan vernacular languages. Narc won in a landslide victory against the independence party, Kanu.

[...]

“Sheng is actually a national language since no single tribe can lay claim to it. It is not official yet but it soon will be,” Freddie, who also doubles as a landscape architect and youth mentor says.

Ogweno is well convinced of the inferred ethnic-neutral status of sheng and its potential to ameliorate ethnic strife that threatens to divide the country. In partnership with fourteen other organisations under the Tuvuke Initiative Ogweno says Sheng was invaluable in post 2007/8 election violence youth messaging ahead of the 2013 general election as a tool for preaching cohesion.

Mainstream Advertising

Perhaps the most visible demonstration of Sheng’s growing stature is its acquired position as the de facto language for advertising and awareness campaigns over the last two decades. Advertisers realise that Sheng’s brevity can enable them to concisely deliver messages to Kenya’s majorly youthful population. Advertisements like Ni poa kuchill (it’s cool to abstain), Mkopo wa salo (loan against your salary), Bankika na KCB (Get banked at KCB) and a myriad other including the government’s own Gava inakusort (the government is helping you out) have helped foster favourable attitudes towards Sheng.

[...]

“By incorporating non-standard Swahili, advertisers not only reinterpret the identity of the product but also enhance the social attitudes towards Sheng,” Prof Mungai Mutonya argues in a study published by the Journal of African Cultural Studies.

While the written use of Sheng is a relatively marginal phenomenon, there are a number of publications such as Kwani? (so what?) that attempt to normalise the idea of Sheng as not just a spoken language only. Shujaaz.FM, a free monthly Sheng comic launched in 2010 reaches up to 5 million Kenyan youth through print, radio and electronic outlets.

[...]

Sheng has spread across the borders to Uganda and Tanzania due to musical collaborations, social media and social interactions. If you listen to several recent Tanzanian songs today you are bound to hear Sheng words such as Ngeta (mugging), manzi (girlfriend), kuwaka (drinking) and keroro (alcohol).

“If people are given proper room for expression in that which they are proficient in, you can be shocked at what they are able to achieve,” Freddie urges."
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Here's The link to a YouTube video of  Joshua Kutuny's speech in Sheng that was mentioned in the beginning of this article.

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This article includes a photo of billboards with this caption: These two billboards along Nairobi's Moi Avenue evidence the ascent of the Sheng' language into a de facto advertising language. Some Sheng words seen here are: "Usitense" (never worry) and dabo dabo (double-double).

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This article also includes a compilation of several photos of posters with Sheng with the words  “Sex? Not now. tume-chill”at the top of the poster and the words “Ni poa ku chill” at the bottom.

Caption: “This campaign to delay sexual debut among adolescents in Kenya by Population Services International (PSI) is one of the most memorable timestamps in Sheng’s journey to mainstream acceptance.

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