Excerpt Of A 2011 Article About Swahili And Sheng Greeting Words & Response In Stone Town, Zanzibar

Edited  by Azizi Powell

This pancocojams post presents an excerpt of a 2011 article about Swahili And Sheng in Zanzibar.

The content of this post is presented for linguistic purposes.

All copyrights remain with their owners.

Thanks to  Amanda Leigh Lichtenstein, the author of this showcased article.  

-snip-
Notice the 2011 date of this article and note the author's point that "By the time you read this, it’s possible that 20 new words are flip-flopping around, going through try-outs and show-times."

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EXCERPT OF 2011 ARTICLE ABOUT SWAHILI AND SHENG 

Guide to Swahili street slang in Stone Town, Zanzibar

by Amanda Leigh Lichtenstein, May 6, 2011

https://matadornetwork.com/abroad/guide-to-swahili-street-slang-in-stone-town-zanzibar/

"There are at least 20 ways to answer the popular question that I never learned in formal Swahili classes. The gap between school and street could not be wider than in Stone Town, Zanzibar’s capital city, a UNESCO World Heritage site, that nearly 400,000 residents call home. Here, the lugha ya kisasa “slang” or lugha ya mitaani “street language” changes by the minute, mostly by young people who flip or shine an old word, or fashion a completely new one, inspired by hyper-local contexts, meanings, and realities.

I thought I knew Kiswahili. I’d earned an “advanced” certificate at the State University of Zanzibar. The program prides itself on teaching a kind of Swahili described as sanifu (standard) or fasaha (clean). It was rigorous and foundational, but it left me speechless (more like a “beginner”) every time I left the classroom and headed down Stone Town’s boisterous streets, where social greetings happen at every corner and turn. You really can’t walk from point A to point B in Stone Town without getting involved in greeting loops with friends and strangers alike.

Perhaps the gatekeepers of Standard Swahili do not want to accept that Stone Town youth have been and continue to be deeply influenced by Sheng – a kind of Swahili ‘patois’ that developed by urban youth in Eastern Nairobi in the 1970’s and spread, overtime, into all realms of East African life as a legitimate form of expression. While most Zanzibaris still speak a more formal Swahili, youth here are tapped into regional and global influences like music, film, and fashion that daily change the contours and textures of street Swahili. The most immediate example of that lives within the brackets of Swahili street greetings.

Not greeting someone, especially when they greet you first, is often seen as a straight-up insult, if not a totally rude and ignorant act explained only by the cruelty of a changing, globalized world.

Maamkizi (greetings) are a major part of Swahili culture. Not greeting someone, especially when they greet you first, is often seen as a straight-up insult, if not a totally rude and ignorant act explained only by the cruelty of a changing, globalized world. It’s true, the extended greeting is old-school, a shout-out to simpler times, when everyone had and/or took the time to truly acknowledge who they were passing on the street.

Everyone learns lugha ya heshima – language of respect — which is a detailed, hierarchical system of greetings depending primarily on age but also on status. The official way to greet, depending on who you talk to and where, happens at least five different ways, often accompanied by hand-shaking, hand-kissing, or at least a wave.

[includes a list of Swahili or Sheng greeting words with their English meanings]

This greeting thing could go on and on, spiralling into story-sparring and reminiscing, politicking and lamenting. If you really have to wrap up a long loop, though, there are a few classics that have withstood the test of time.

[list of Swahili or Sheng responses with their English meanings]

Take a deep breath in, sigh, offer out your hand for a shake or a Rasta-style fist-pound, and then say haya, baadaye (okay, later!) or haya, tutaonana! (okay, we’ll see each other!). If you need to offer an explanation, simply saying niko busy (I’m busy) or nina haraka (I’m in a hurry) usually does the trick. And then you’re off! That is, until you meet someone else on the street, and the greeting game starts all over again with an equally upbeat, mambo, vipi?! By the time you read this, it’s possible that 20 new words are flip-flopping around, going through try-outs and show-times.

The most popular end-phrase in a greeting loop on the island of Zanzibar is the timeless:

Tuko pamoja – We’re [in this] together.

The heart-felt sentiment, echoed back and forth between greeters at the end of any Stone Town street-and-greet, really does say it all.

Tuko pamoja.

Haya, niko busy – baadaye.’’

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