 This is the first department of the seminar of the linguistics department this year. And we are very pleased, we are very distinguished and a good friend as well as speaker. This is a Czech interviewer who is a colleague from the African department. He is a senior lecturer in Swahili and he has worked quite a bit on Spanish as it were. Spanish and Swahili. He has written a dictionary Spanish in Swahili. His work in Mexico was based in Mexico for some years and has written a monograph on Afro-Mexican relations which is interesting because lots of African American interaction often focuses on Brazil. And Mexico was up to that monograph, really a bit of a dark spot on the landscape and now it isn't anymore. But the other big research focus of Czech's work is Scheng, which he will explain in more detail. It's an urban African youth language if I can. It's disagreement, I probably won't. But it's spoken in Kenya, we agree on that. And he has a 2002 article I think in the Journal of African Cultural Studies, which is our own journal. And that is still probably one of the key references in the discussion in Scheng. If you look at the Scheng literature, this is one of the articles which is cited. So we're very pleased to have Czech with us today to open the seminar series and talk about Scheng and in particular about the logic and impact of Scheng on Kenya's linguistic landscape. Thank you very much, Luth, for a wonderful introduction. Indeed, I'm quite happy to be here to talk with you about my ongoing project. As Luth has mentioned, it has become a very topical issue now in the language studies in Kenya and East Africa in general. A dozen, ten, twelve years ago, when I published the article first time, there was only another two articles prior to that, right? The one was 1987, the next one was 1997, and then mine was in 2002. And hopefully there will be another one soon on my part. I'm actually working in the press, so to speak. But currently there are conferences, workshops, and many other activities all around this Scheng project. And part of the reason I think, and I will explain as we go on, is that at the very beginning it has always been defined as a peer language that is ever-changing, ever-evolving, unstable, non-permanent, and so forth. However, 15 years have gone by, 20 years have gone by, and Scheng instead of dwindling in numbers and scope and domains of use is actually increasing. And so this is why I think there is a renewed interest on this phenomenon. Right, so how much time do we have? So I think we have to leave the room by five, so about 45 minutes an hour for both of us. And that would give us 20 minutes and a half an hour. That's probably more than enough, thank you. So I thought of talking about the logic in a double kind of sense. First of all, in terms of the logic of using, the logic of the language itself, we all know that languages have structure and they have a specific way that they have been formulated. So one of the points raised many times was that Scheng has no rules, right? It is fluid, it is all changing and so forth. And I want to argue that there's a bit more to that, there's more than that. Secondly, I want to try to explain the logic of why the Scheng, what is an inner city youth language associated with the underclass, is on the rise. There has to be some explanation for that, there has to be a reason for this. And this is what I'm going to try to explain, the logic as to why Scheng continues to rise. But very briefly is a background. This is my working definitions for the time. It hasn't changed very much except that now I am going to add a few more things to the subject. But really it is at the time anyway an age marked urban dialect of Kenyan Swahili, which I thought whose outer form was very pigeon-like. At the time again there was a lot of discussion about whether Scheng is a pigeon or some people even propose it to be a creole. So in actual fact that article I wrote it was in the form of a question. Is Scheng a youth language, a pigeon or an emerging creole? And my response was this one in conclusion. Scheng is very much linked to multilingualism and urban cultures. So it has a reason from a very complex multilingual situation found in Nairobi, which I'm going to describe very briefly very soon. Scheng, the main characteristic as many other mixed codes is code mixing. A lot of lexical and now phonological innovations. According to Spiropulus, who wrote the very first article in the Oxford Journal of Anthropology, she claimed that she thought that Scheng as a mixed code, as an urban mixed code, had its roots in Nairobi as far back as the 1940s. Just before, still during the colonial period, when lots of people from different ethnicities were housed together in somewhat segregated conditions in the city of Nairobi. And so the language that emerged out of a people who had not a common language and also whose competence in the languages, the common languages, that is Swahili and English, was quite reduced. So they came up with something that could accommodate all the different speakers at the time. And this has not been disputed very much. But again, on the other hand, there isn't much evidence of that because we don't have many speakers reporting to have been speaking that language at the time. However, we cannot argue about the fact that it is a product of the coexistence of speakers of many different languages who are further differentiated by culture and socioeconomic class. These two factors are also important. One, culture, because again, we tend to oversimplify the situation in Africa that is as if one African culture. But within Kenya, in Africa, there may be a great diversity of culture. And within the city of Nairobi, you have quite diverse, people with very diverse views about life and society and their cultural differences are quite pronounced. This has a role to play in this emergence of this language. Secondly, socioeconomic class. As we shall explain, at the very beginning, Cheng has always been associated with the underclass with the bottom part of the socioeconomic pyramid, but now we are seeing some bit of differences, sort of rising out of the bottom, you know, rising toward the top. Babe, again, I won't dwell too much on this, but I think it's important to highlight the character of Nairobi. It has 10% of the total population of the country. It produces 60% of Kenya's GDP. That means most of the money made in Kenya is made in Nairobi. And that means most of the economic activity takes place in Nairobi. And also, subsequently, at least in terms of language and culture, it is an epicenter, you know, it is from where many, many trends begin and spread out. Now, in terms of language, it is important to note that whatever language comes out of Nairobi, let's talk about Swahili. You see a difference between Nairobi and Dar es Salaam. Dar es Salaam, as an epicenter of the Swahili standard Swahili language in Tanzania, is, well, the inhabitants, or the original people of Dar es Salaam are actually native Swahili speakers. So if Dar es Salaam is an epicenter, it tends to spread out good Swahili, so to speak, more or less. Nairobi being an epicenter of another kind and still exporting to the rest of the country, it sort of spreads, what it spreads in this case is actually sheng, not anything else. So this is important at the end of the day. The point about most of the people living on only a very small part of the city, again, this is nothing unusual about Nairobi, many African cities are like that, but the implication is that a lot of people live in very crowded places, but more importantly these days, they have begun to spread out. With improved communications, better roads that are now leading out of the city, better services, electricity and so on and so forth, people are finding it much more convenient. Instead of living in a tight little room in the city, spread out to the sort of service, middle income and low income areas, and I will argue that this spreading out of the community, of the people out of the city, is also they are taking sheng along with them to other parts of the country, to the rural areas and to other towns of the country. Also the rural urban linkages, as again with many African cities, they remain very strong. People move back and forth from the village. When things are good, when there's a job in the city, you stay on for a while. If things get hard, you always have a little home in the village where you can go back and regroup yourself and your energies or live in a different way. And then after that you go back. Now what happens is that if people who have been living in the city, they take something habits with them back to their rural basis and that includes language as well. So we are seeing also sheng in this way being taken to other parts of the outside of Nairobi. So this is just to give you an idea of what we're talking about. So the yellow part would be the city itself, the city of Nairobi. And sheng would have been started somewhere there. But now this metropolitan area is where most Kenyans are now spreading. So in actual fact, those four million people we are talking about, probably most of them are actually maybe in this other area. And now this is becoming included as part of the Nairobi city metropolitan area, which I think even at the time I was writing, we were writing 10, 15 years ago, Nairobi was still considered to be just the yellow part. Right. Quickly about language in Kenya, the domains of use. We find English, as you can see, is the main language for news and media, international business, education, higher levels of government. That means, yes, most of the parliamentary debates and other policy meetings and so on and so forth are held in English. But when the political thing, government goes down to the rural communities, they are more likely to use Swahili or the local vernacular. So Swahili for a so-called lower level commercial activity, I mean day-to-day commercial trade and so forth, social interaction, inter-ethnic communication, on the radio, of course, and so very importantly, to express nationalism and solidarity. Now, Shang has entered into most of these domains today. Right. As I shall demonstrate shortly, it is now Shang, or this variety of Kenyan Swahili, has entered all these other domains that were restricted, very strictly to English and Swahili. And so, generally, this whole change and the increasing use of Shang, I think, is a fascinating phenomenon with regard to the phenomenon of linguistic contact and change, innovation and so forth, but also within a specific urban African context. An offshoot of Shang is Angsh, okay. Who, again, Abdul Aziz Anusinder, who wrote the second article on Shang, right. They had a little entry there about Angsh, which they argued was a counterpart to these other code associated with the lower classes. So the upper classes decided to bring out their own little, you know, another code, more prestigious, much more based on English, but still involving a lot of code mixing. I'll come back to that in a while. Right. So, as I said before, the extreme registers of Shang have always been associated, or maybe still linked to the underworld, criminal, youthful, prohibited, but not necessarily illegal activities. For example, the Matatu industry, which is the mini bus, the transport industry is very, very, is a vibrant industry in Kenya. There are thousands, hundreds of thousands of mini buses that transport people back and forth all over throughout the country. The dominant language that is used by this fairly interesting characters is Shang, mainly. So there's a bit of association with that part. However, these registers are becoming an minority space. Now, 10, 15 years ago, it would have been very difficult to hear a public figure actually even daring to speak anything about Shang or in Shang. But now, not too long ago, we have even the US president speaking Shang. Thank you. Thank you so much. Please, everybody, have a seat. Good morning. Thank you, Elie Jambo. Thank you so much. That's standard for Elie Jambo. For timely remarks, you're all welcome and great work that has gone into hosting this summit. It is wonderful to be back in Kenya. Nwaje, haci. And obviously, this is personal for me. The reason why my name is Barack Hussein Obama. Okay. Okay. We know the reason why. But this, the interesting thing is that he started out with standard Swahili Huyambo. A lot of people here know how to say Huyambo. And then he paused for a while and decided he has to make some kind of impact. And he goes Nwaje. Now, this is archetypical Shang, right? Paratypical Shang, okay? Which many people would associate with very young people of a certain social class or ethnicity, so to speak. Okay? It is sort of equivalent of saying, yo, what's up, guys? And this is what Obama said. Now, he must have some advisor who was clearly attuned to the trends, the linguistic trends, and decided to use that. But I use that to simply make the point that Shang has the acceptability of this youth code, of this class with origins in the class has become almost mainstream. Now, he's not the only one. We shall see there are other politicians who have also engaged in that, who have used Shang. So what I think is that this expansion of the domains of use of Shang, right, require some investigation, right? We need to find out what is going on and, more importantly, what is going to happen. At this point, it's important about Shang and others like it, like the new spoken in Abijan and come from Glee. Shang says that Shang did not arise out of the need of a need. There was no communicative need. We have Swahili. Swahili is perfectly well suited for inter-ethnic communication and even international communication, of course. But still, the need or the arising of this and the additional code raises important questions about language, about, you know, if language is simply a means of communication, we know that it's not only that, but how do these codes arise and why are they coming up? So I'm working on the hypothesis that this original character of Shang has changed as an in-group covered in his language is changing to that of an urban code of wider communication, an urban vernacular. Okay? And it firmly belongs to the continuum of code that Nairobi and Kenyans in general navigate through, which is characterized by extensive code mixing, which I have coined this term, Kenyanese. I'm not sure if you're going to stick, but that's what I think, because I'll explain shortly. I will not go too much in that, but again, it's important to point out, on average, Nairobians and Kenyans speak an average of three languages. Few people don't speak three languages. Most people speak at least two, at least two, but probably most speak three. At least the research I did way back, I found that about close to 90% of the respondents, of about 1,200 respondents claimed to speak three languages. But I'm not the only one. Others have also done the same. Now, there has been a bit of discussion, again, of the last season, of seeing that they have argued that it's a kind of triglossia, but I find that does not quite tell it with the what Ferguson proposed way back in 1959. And I think somebody else, Snow, who was looking at other situations in Asia, I think it describes a bit better modern triglossia where you have, rather than a high variety and a low variety, the use of a standard variety being sort of the equivalent to the high. And the low L varieties would be more about, would be the vernaculars or the other codes, the non-standard varieties that are used within the situation. In this case, I include Sheng there. So this is because we're not talking of a situation where only the one language is used exclusively for certain, let's say, religious purposes or others. No. English in Kenya is used for all kinds of purposes. Swahili standards, Swahili is used for all kinds of different varieties, purposes. So it is not exclusive to the other non-standard varieties. So again, very small number of Kenyans have high competence in the standard varieties, whether it's English or Swahili. Okay? And therefore, the low varieties of Swahili, well, I'm calling them low varieties, meaning the non-standard varieties, including Sheng, all right? Okay? As well as the vernaculars, that is, the Kenyan-African languages are the most widely used codes in Nairobi. In other words, very few people around Nairobi go around what is talking, you know, a proper standard English or Swahili. Therefore, code mixing is extensive and results in this, what I'm calling Kenyanese, to describe a variety of ways of describing Kenyans Swahili, Kenyan English, Sheng, and all those things. To me, they're just simply varieties that exist along a continuum. And most Kenyans are perfectly able to navigate back and forth, depending on the situation, the factors that are available. Right, again, we know all these that language mixing, language contacts result in things, things of borrowing, calculating, code switching, and so forth. I'll give a few examples, so on. And I think, I'll focus more a bit on code switching, or code mixing in general, because I think it's more interesting in terms of linguistic theory, particularly from a socio-psychological perspective. I like this view, but tough of code switching, or code mixing, language mixing, is a strategy of neutrality. Because I find there is a reason why people who are perfectly capable of speaking standard English, or perfectly able to speak standard Swahili, choose not to. There are situations which require, they seem to establish some kind of solidarity, some kind of report, which is expressed in terms of language and otherwise would not be. So trying to believe that this extensive code mixing is motivated by these psychological factors. And in the case of Kenya, I think they are quite relevant, where ethnic nationalism is high, where there's a lot of disparities, socioeconomic disparities. People have to find a way of speaking to each other in a polite way, in a nice way, without offending one another by using codes that are identified with, you know, any of these particular groups. I won't go too much in that detail, because you know about code mixing, and you know about the matrix language framework of Maya Scotland, which, you know, has its issues, but has been used to explain my situations. And I adopted it more because it was developed out of the Kenyan situation, because studies were based on studies in Nairobi, and in Kenya, various parts of the country. However, what is important is that this idea of the matrix language I think is important, because basically, she argues that in code mixing situations, there is always the basic language, the language in which things are embedded, you know, borrowed from another language. And so, if we take this perspective, it might be easy to explain Shang versus Anx, so that you have the matrix in Shang, is Swahili, and the matrix in Anx is English, so that you're bringing in other material, but just by switching back and forth the matrix. Right, also, the languages of Kenya, that's also important, out of vernacular Kenyan-African languages, can also act as matrix, because sometimes people are using one of the Kenyan languages, but they're bringing in English, Swahili, and possibly other languages. So, basically, extensive code mixing is the norm, and all forms of discourse, public and private, and even informal registers. Just an example, again, this is a pastor, but you can see the part in red, they are either English, or they are English, or Swahili, right? Sorry. One of them is, sorry, oops. Okay. Maybe you should listen to that one first, although you may not understand. Oops, that's not working. I'm not sure if it's going to work. It will come better in a minute. Anyone? If not, maybe then it's not very important, but you might, if the volume... Just listen. Okay. This young lady here is describing her, you know, very difficult pasts, okay? And what she's doing is she's... just like this pastor here, who is also... I'm interviewing. The code mixing is ubiquitous, right? Whether the matrix is Swahili or English, and the point I'm trying to make here simply is that in Kenya, or in Nairobi, very few people do not code mix, and I'm going to shortly argue the implication of this upon what we call Sheng. These are examples of... Let me go back to... Yeah. An example of the kind of code switching, and by the way, some people such as Bocamba make a distinction between code mixing and code switching, code switching referring to changing languages, or this... Yes, completely, switching from one language to another, full units of the language, whereas mixing can bring in and bound more things and fix them up into the language or the matrix that is being talked about. So that distinction, I won't dwell too much on it because at the end of the day, there are a lot of codes, but you can see here with a translation in English what might be regarded as English, I don't ever buy anything Hapatao. This is somebody from the upper class part of Nairobi. A Sheng speaker would say, maybe it's in Nuange, Kituapatao. Now, if you do a bit of Swahili, you will find that you will understand what he means or what this phrase here, is negative, but it's using a non-standard habitual form in the negative, and I'll come back to that again to explain a bit more later. This one here, again, that's a very normal kind of sentence which I've elicited with people. Why do you want a baby at the age of 20? So at the age of 20 comes into a Swahili matrix very naturally and nobody buys an eyelid and goes on. Now, whether this is what you call in Sheng or Kenyan Swahili, that's one of the questions that we want to raise. Another one here, another same girl here I was interviewing, so she says because both code switching and code mixing can happen in the same speech event. So, Nika decided not to run away. So I told him, this is a very shang, you know, way of saying I'm pregnant, I'm pregnant for the second time he started to beat me, so then I decided to run away. Nika decides, so that's clear code mixing, you know. Decide is being inserted straight into a Swahili verb phrase. These are the sample here, I picked this up actually from a radio talk show. Again, I think some of the live calling talk shows are quite credible sources of, you know, natural data. And you have this host, who was a perfectly, you know, native Swahili speaker from the coast. When we were in Uyunugu, the beautiful ones are not yet born. And then immediately she translates, she translated that phrase in bold. Okay, and again back to Paf and other scholars of the phenomenon, they argue that this type of hedges, or you know, translating exactly what you've said, indicate an awareness that one is code mixing. And this is what makes a difference between plain borrowing and code mixing. So a lot of stuff that we find in the spoken language is actually people are conscious of it. They are aware that they are actually switching the language. Okay. So this sentence, for example, in sample five, many speakers, Kenyans or Tanzanians, would not really realize that they are using English, okay, and Arabic in that sentence. So the items in bold are loans from Arabic and from English. But how many Kenyans know that that is the case? I might guess about Hoteli, sounds a bit familiar, right? But many, most people do not realize kahawa where that comes from. And many even don't realize wiki is an English loan from wik. So this an awareness is what distinguishes loans or borrowed words from, yeah. However, in the next one, you know, this sentence here, clearly, this person would have to know some English. Imagine in Toiwaku Tafilaje, by the way, you should highlight this feel. This is feel, English feel. Yeah? Imagine it's your child. How would you feel? Okay? So this person, clearly, is not, you know, using loans or borrowed words. You know, this perfectly, well, you know, maybe not so perfect, but conscious that they are using two different grammars. So with those few examples, one question that arises is, now, when we glorify and say, okay, Sheng you know, youth is a such a dialect of, is a one of the dialects of Swahili, is a such a dialect Swahili, what makes that real? Is it a case that the ordinary spoken language of many Nairobians, okay, is actually a form of Sheng? Because Sheng is characterized mainly by code switching, although there are a few other things that I will indicate. But those other things, including code changes or features that have come, crept into Swahili from Sheng are now being adopted by mainstream. And this is where we have, I have, I want to raise a point. So the next few things I'm going to highlight, right, are what you might say called non-standard features of Kenyan Swahili, right? Or what would be the features of Kenyan Swahili, okay? Now the question is, is this what is being used as Sheng? So, for example, rule extension of a generalization is very quite common. And this is just one example of which Obama used. If only he knew how, you know, he had, he has murdered the language, he would be probably not very keen, right? So, in Swahili standard Swahili, this M marks, rather the underlying part of it, all of it indicates second person plural, okay, already in itself. It does encode that information. This suffix is used in other situations, not in this where you've already marked the person already, okay? In imperatives, okay, then you can use the knee, right? To mark the difference between singular U and singular Uro, okay? So, you come here, enjoy but you all come here, enjoy. Because Swahili, unlike English, but like many other Bantu languages, it makes a distinction between singular U and plural U. So what happens with Kenyan speakers or non-stand speakers is that they take these rules where it doesn't belong, right? And so you have this very common phrase which I hear all the time, public speakers with politicians and they greet people. Hamjamboni, which is not, you know, it's really over-generalizing that rule of the use of the suffix knee. Um, mythology as well, right? You have these, these are ordinary verbs, right? So for example, Kuangalesha comes from the verb ongeya to speak, okay? But there is no such derivation as ongelesha, which this person is trying to mean to talk, to make somebody talk. Actually in Kenyan speech, it is used to mean talking to somebody, okay? Right? But in standard Swahili that's not unacceptable. So it's another example of over-generalizing that. A lot of simplified morphology, that's you know, quite common to the extent that, you know, some people would think, would propose, would have proposed that some of the Swahili spoken in parts of Kenya is pigeon-like or is, is, is too simplified. But again you will notice that this is spoken and said by many people who could otherwise speak, you know, proper Swahili including myself, you know, when I'm in the right situation. So there has to be other explanations, not just the paucity of grammar. In other words, instead of infixation this is very common in Kenyan Swahili rather than infixation which should be, which is more common in standard. This common one, the the habitual tense, this is now becoming in Kenyan Swahili reverting from its all ban-to origins, right? Which had sort of disappeared along the history of Swahili for some reason, maybe from influence from Arabic and other languages but now it's making a comeback to where it belongs, sort of and it comes back in Kenyan Swahili in the sense that perhaps because many other ban-to languages have this aga, actually it's aga, right, the habitual suffix. But Swahili uses who a prefix to describe something you do habitually. I come to school every day and in this in Kenyan Swahili or Shang, you hear but beyond aga it has also have noted in my interviews that in my observations the pre-nasalization of that of that is now almost standard. So most people will not simply say but mimihuku yanga. So again, that's very typical of that. Changes such as weakening of sounds, right? So again in Shang, Kenyan Swahili stroke Kenyan Swahili, most of the time you hear people say naeza instead of naweza. Naweza becomes naeza siwezi, siiezi and so forth, okay? It's very, very common as well. Sealable structure? Definitely. And that's what makes Shang sound so different and weird. Okay? Lots of long open syllables for some reason. It is the end for some reason. So Ocha becomes Ocha Mtoi becomes Mtoi Odeyo becomes Odeyo and so forth. There's always this sort of additional weight of the syllables at the end of words. Obviously the lexical innovations are the most. They are all over the place. Okay? And these are some of the things that make Kenyan Swahili distinctive. Now this one that I have included here, they are actually from what is considered Shang. So again, 10 15 years ago, this would not have been heard even in non-standard Kenyan Swahili. Okay? So now the boundary between the two is quite blurry, in my view. Right? Because now all these you'll hear them in very ordinary Kenyan Swahili in formal and in formal registers to an extent. Okay? Not all the time, but to an extent. And without fear of speaking the wrong version of the language. A lot of non-Arabic, non-English foreign words. That's another observation in Kenyan Swahili. So as you all know, the history of Swahili is filled with loans. Some people estimate up to 40% in certain registers maybe from Arabic. And then of course, English in the last, you know, 670, 200 years has also contributed a lot. But now more recently, I notice Kenyan languages, particularly Gekuyu, or what we call Gekuyu. Right? And for good reason because these area, Nairobi is situated, you know, in both Gekuyu and Maasai-speaking people's country. And so greater population perhaps and therefore more influence of that. But all these words, Shoushou. So grandmother Shoushou in Gekuyu has taken hold totally. Most Kenyans are talking about Nainakumuna Shoushou. I'm going to see my Shoushou. That's actually Gekuyu. There are two words in Swahili, Bibi, which is used in the Southern Daleks, Tasnian mainly and Nyania, which is used in standard Kenyan Swahili. But Kenyans have rejected both and borrowed another word from the language in contact. And this is what I talked about and I think it's a very interesting thing happening here about what happens in these contact situations. Right. So there are many. And I have a whole section later on somewhere, not today, but because it's too much, about all these Gekuyu loans. Because I as I did the research, I realized there are many, many, many more. Much more in proportion than any of the other languages. Because there are other loans from other languages. And I've said there's a lot of influence because of the proximity. Yeah, many, these are more examples of which are ubiquitous in Kenyan Swahili. The grammar as well, you know. You have so things like Nittakamkeshu. You'll hear it. Even from lecturers and other people. I'll come tomorrow. This is from English, Nittakamkeshu. Again, a few years back would have seemed pretty badly. That's called ghetto language. Youth language. Underclass language. Unemployed youth. Criminal language. But now it's all over. Nittakamkeshu. This I find very interesting because this one you can see is just a mix of one verb from English into Swahili. Here now even a native speaker of Swahili might have trouble understanding that. Because Ishiya is not a standard word to go. It comes to end. It means to end actually. In its prepositional form probably means end towards or something like that. But now this has become the very most common word ubiquitous word to mean go. This is quite amazing, right? I've recorded this. I tested this. Radical changes of grammar. Because Swahili does not allow multiple objects. Other languages do. And in Kenya Swahili you'll find that this not quite acceptable but it is it can be heard. So my view is that some of these innovations and changes through contact influence may become permanent features of Kenya Swahili. So again if we do another 10 years from now here we want to see what's going to be the situation like. So very quickly to demonstrate how Shang is entering so-called mainstream domains. I'll just go very quickly through a few examples of that. At work. This is something I overheard not too long ago. I'm just standing in the line and I'm listening to the bank tellers. And this is what I heard. This is not Swahili. It's not good Swahili. It's not good English either. And this is an upmarket bank in an upmarket neighborhood where you expect people to be very proper more or less. But the bank tellers between themselves you know I could do over here. They are speaking what people call Shang. And again this is why I'm questioning whether it is Shang or it's just how. Is that how Kenyans speak? Nipé 120K 120K means 120,000 shillings. So you know all that information you wouldn't know if you you'd have to fill in because it's really heavily coded. Hey, who can I do? Do from Do English. Money person. So it's a very common Shang word. Again, 15, 20 years ago these are very old ones by the way. It was way back in the 70s, maybe back from the colony times. Do. But up until recently it was totally unacceptable in where mainstream speech situation for the youth down there. Do. But now it's in the bank. They are talking about Do. In schools. Again, this is another whole topic of another whole chapter on this because Shang number one Shang plays a very important role in the daily lives of young people in Kenya as with all other people because group reference so-called peer pressure is really, really important. So young people want to speak like others. They don't want to be left out and so Shang is principal in that, is fundamental in terms of being as a youth in the right crowd of people. Now number two, many Kenyan youth first come into close contact with each other during a formative period of life in high school I should say, and that's where they expand their personal and social linguistic networks. Remember again, especially people from rural areas, they may never have left their village or their community throughout their life until they get into high school at a very critical time in their life. So they are 13, 14, 15. Suddenly, especially boarding schools, very important because now it's a microcosm again of Nairobi because again the two things boarding schools are more prestigious because they cost more, right? So you know, if you go to boarding school, you expected you're sort of in better socioeconomic position. Number two, they receive people from all over the country and more so from Nairobi. So that's why I say the boarding schools of Kenya tend to be really reflective of the larger nation and so once the kids join that school you know, they go into the school, the first thing they do is to pick up shame which has been brought by the even more prestigious peers who come from the city, the urban based city boys and girls. What happens during the holidays, these little fellas from the rural communities, they go back to their villages, our communities and now I'm walking around in the community where I was born myself, not far from Nairobi and I hear shame all over the place. The young boys, they don't even want to speak Ikuyu. They don't even want to be heard speaking Ikuyu. Okay, it's too unprostigious, right? Shame is what matters and as I did a little short study, that's what I found out in one of the local secondary schools about it's about 60 kilometers, 50 kilometers from Nairobi. Just beyond that region, maybe I should show you that so that you can get an idea here. So that school is somewhere here, right? Just on the edge of what is officially the metropolitan Nairobi area. So it's just like, but it's about you know, this is about 40, 50 kilometers. With a new super highway now, not big deal, you know, be there in an hour or less. Okay. It's driving all by public transport. Now, so what I, I went to this school which is, you know, right in the heartland of Ikuyu speaking community. And this is what I found. If you look at the Sheng column, suddenly nobody claimed Sheng as the first language. I feel, say, claimed, you know, one of, I think this the total was 235 students that I had fill out questionnaire. But we noticed that their street language, what I call their street language, the language that they, they, they, I asked them what language do you speak when you're out there with the boys at the pool bar. They like pool, pool to play pool or to watch videos or to watch football in a local pool in the local shopping center. And they say Sheng, of course. And I popped in, you know, a couple of occasions and of course they're good here. You know, a mix of art, but, you know, you could hear a lot of Sheng going on for solidarity, again, you know, to talk with each other. And I think, you know, I think they're very interested in using that, okay, for solidarity more than their first language. So Sheng, in a rural community, is more important, more used by the young boys and girls, you know, more than their own mother tongue. And these are fairly homogenous, you know, linguistically speaking, you could speak in a community. You have no reason not to get along with anyone if you speak English. But you know, they're quite interesting. Obviously in school, they're not allowed. They're discouraged from speaking that. And that's why you can see very small reports, you know, of both the mother tongue and the Sheng, because maybe they wouldn't even tell me if they did, because they are afraid that, you know, they might be, yeah. But I thought it's quite interesting because just, you know, just by observation, I had seen, you know, there's a change going on. There are changes going on. And this study, short study, revealed showed that. In politics, lots of it. I'll just say very briefly. Unbloggable is a song that came out in 2002, precisely. The first multi-party election after 24 years of having one, you know, person, and therefore there was a lot of excitement of getting a new leadership and so forth. And the person who won the presidency, Moeke Baki, they adopted the song. Genghe is his Kenyan hip-hop. That's the name they use for Kenyan hip-hop. It's basically the hip-hop we all know about. You know, you were based. But in Swahili, or in Sheng, I should say, in that matter. Now, unbloggable is not, strictly speaking, is not Sheng, but it is reflective of that coinage that goes on all the time in Sheng and in Kenyan language. And is actually the English prefix, you know, negative, not doable. And then the apple is the suffix, the usual suffix of English of saying ability to do something. Borgo is the only is a luo, the luo, one of the Kenyan's main languages. It is a luo verb, meaning beat or conquer. So you can guess unbloggable means. What is unbloggable? Unbeatable. And it was so bragging and so forth. It appealed to those politicians and they adopted it in their political rallies and so forth. They used that song and guess what? They won the presidency. And that's, in my view, my observation, this is when the years began to prick among people and say, hey, wait a minute. You mean a serious old man like Moeke Bakke can actually adopt a Sheng, you know, sort of Shengish, you know, youthful beat and word and actually win the presidency. And then he went on to use a few other Sheng words during his speeches which would have everybody roaring with laughter. So I think from around then there is a bit of an opening. So you can see languages very much linked to local politics and dynamics. The next one was Tunawes Mek. This is also another presidential candidate who last election in 2012, yeah? Tunawes Mek. Again, the verb here is Mek in English. Mek. Wes is actually Weza. It should be Weza in Swahili. Weza. Able to. Can. And then the Tuna is simply the subject marker for the first person plural and the present tense. So we can make it. That's what it means. Tunawes Mek. We can make it. Genius. And you know, he had t-shirts and everything printed out of his slogan. Oh, Tunawes Mek, Tunawes Mek. Unfortunately he didn't. He actually came last. So it didn't only work with that. And then of course President Obama only a few months ago when he visited Kenya. Also getting done. The reason I bring this up is to demonstrate that, you know, sort of, I mean, you know, I'd like to believe it's not just, you know, playing games with the youth. It's possible, you know, considering that you know, by the latest count 62% of the Kenyan population is under 35 years old. So if you're a clever politician, obviously you want to get their votes, you know, for some reason. But I think it's beyond that. I think there is a way in which Sheng is redefining the cultural identity of Kenya. Right? It is reflecting some kind of modernity. It is the one that is showing, yes, we are, you know, we knew as we shall see. You go on the internet you'll find these things. You go on the media. I just did, you know, I looked at different media platforms and I may have missed one or two. I don't think. But all these, you know, outlets they actually broadcast Sheng, in Sheng in various ways, whether it's a full news program or you know, other shows, yeah. Including the national TV, which is the KBC, right. Sheng is not discouraging. In fact, when I listen to the calling shows and I listen to the people doing interviews it's amazing. They might condemn somebody for speaking Sheng, but that's what they actually speaking themselves. So it's very interesting that the disconnect between the actual linguistic performance and the perception, you know, by the individual. So online you have lots of social media groups and email chat groups and a whole website. One website dedicated to Sheng, right, which is a group of young people in Nairobi who have taken it as a project and have actually done quite well winning, you know, grants from the nation and so forth to promote whatever it is that they're doing, but they're using Sheng as the language of doing that. Newspapers, you have the definition, some of these national newspapers actually have dedicated pages, you know, in Sheng or Kenya's really whatever you want to call it. The Nairobians is very interesting, as I said Nairobi being the epicenter of all these is a weekly I think, newspaper. They have editorials and news every week in Sheng, which I find quite interesting. Such as this one. I mean, to detail, but it's typical of how a young, youthful Kenya would speak. But this has been translated onto print on a national newspaper and it is actually acceptable. So this is what I mean by a clear change in the evaluation of Sheng in Kenya today. So it's just about you know, teacher strikes and the teachers beating children too much and so forth. And yeah, so most of it the matrix is obviously Swahili here, but Libyra throwing in even less than others. Online as I've said Go Sheng is a whole website dedicated to that language. And this is one of the articles I pulled in from that website. It's about Jeremy Clarkson when he got when he lost his job or got fired. So the question is will Jeremy Clarkson move on to Netflix? Has he? I'm not sure if he has. But I think he was being headhunted for that. And look, the words I've put in bold are all Sheng, actually now proper Sheng words that may in this particular register may not be easily understood by Nan Sheng speaking people. The underlined ones they can be deciphered. For example, Kustri Ma Movie What is that? Anyone can guess? What is this? Kustri Ma Movie Streling movies, right? Yup. Full control. Program. Telly, that's not too hard. Right, so you have English, you have Sheng and a Swahili matrix. And very carefully edited, that's what I noticed. They are very careful because I think they want to set standards of some kind. Basically standardize Sheng. Okay. And they seem to be quite serious because, well, I shouldn't say that because maybe you can go on the website but most of the, a lot of stuff they just cull it from a lot of newspapers around the world, especially tabloids. But still, I think it's very interesting because they address issues that relate to modern things, modernity, right? Because this is not stuff your ordinary over 35 year old would be, well, over 40 years old would be even aware of about Jeremy Clarkson and so on and so forth. But Kenyan youth, Nairobi youth, they are very keyed in, you know, international. So I also see the transnational aspect of this code and how the youth are using it, or the Kenyans are using it to sort of identify themselves as apodly mobile modern with international connections, okay? But they are not the upper class rich, well-to-do you see what I mean? Because that would have been the case. 10, 15, 20 years ago, English would be the one to project that identity. Now, there is a possibility of projecting the same, all right, using Shang. And I think that's what I find very, very interesting because it's a turnaround in the language users. Corporate advertising, lots of it. Even universities, you know, they are using a bit of Shang because, you know, digitize Masomo. Remesham Supu, the ones in red are definitely you know, Shang. In fact, you know, some people some over 40s might object to using that which means a girl, lady, right? Chapa is money, dough, now going from dough to chapa, okay? But this as you can see, it's on a Barclays Bank advertisement. They recognize that and I spoke to some of these people both the Shang practitioners and young people as well as media advertising people and they say, well, they've done their research and they know they can reach out more and they pay handsomely to these people. So that's another dimension I would get into but there's a lot of economic output coming from that as well. That's the what I'm talking about, get your money around the corner. That's actually by the way outside the University of Nairobi, just right outside the University of Nairobi. Right, wonder if again, I'm beginning to wonder mainly because of this last point here. There's a group of people talking about well, look, our education standards are falling, they're low, the kids are graduating, they're neither competent in English nor Israeli, although they're studying the two, but more importantly, the language of instruction, could it be the vernacular or Shang? If we allow for vernacular why not Shang? That's a question. So it brings in issues about constitutionality and whether people can actually make a case for that. But I conclude by saying that these increased use of Shang in wider domains of language to me contradicts popular understanding of it as a transient age graded peer language of not much use away from the streets of inner city Nairobi. And the influence of Shang is evident in adult registers, speech registers and many different domains, which to me again reflect youth led innovation and modernity. They're saying, look we're going to lead the way using this language not that stuffy old language which we don't understand very well either English or Swahili. Standard that is. But also I think Shang also saw to fill the communicative gap created by wide variation in levels of competence. Again, it's a nice strategy of neutrality if you want. If you're not too good in this Swahili English and so forth and you're speaking with someone who doesn't speak your mother tongue you do a bit of extensive code mixing and you get along without losing any prestige. And of course the stigmatization of the African Kenyan vernacular languages is also an important factor, I should say because if you speak Shang you're modern, you're ethnically neutral you're not confronting anybody. If you go around speaking in a group in a place where they don't then you antagonize other people because they cannot understand. So Shang actually serves an important function. And it's not English because again now that looks a bit too it is restricted to certain domains formal domains. And then it's standard Swahili is for many Kenyans it's just too difficult, it's just too complicated. I want to get into all that trouble that's too... Leave it to the Mombasa people and the Tanzanians and all the others. So Shang is a perfect compromise language Shang has broken its inner city frontiers to become an urban vernacular, I want to use this word and in the larger metropolitan region. I also think it has... Shang has added to this colorful spectrum of mixed codes which Kenyans use to navigate around complex stratified multilingual environment. Market forces have recognized the dynamism of language I think and its role in society and contexts and so forth. Well for school curriculum that's another whole topic and language policy. As I said our educations are rising day by day what do we do with these animals I should show you some headlines every other week Shang is the demon it is killing our education it is destroying the eloquence of our children everything is blamed on that and nothing is blamed on the teachers who also cannot teach they cannot speak the language they use very well because that's actually the real problem because the teachers who are insisting on people speaking not speaking Shang, they themselves use Shang unconsciously in class so it's a very interesting thing the disconnect between what is and what is the perceptions and I think that well to summarize linguistic innovation is a natural phenomenon as culture which is dynamic and I think that as Kenya as time goes on it is inevitable that Shang is continuing to play an important role in some of those areas that I have described and that's all I will have to say for now maybe there are a few questions to answer thank you Hi Monique It's fascinating because while I was last year I started looking at a new dialect of a mixture of English and French which is spoken in New Brunswick in Canada and those people like in Canada you have some people both people are valuable you speak your completely fluent in English and French and in that province of New Brunswick in the south of it since 1980 they speak a new language which they call Shia and it's exactly what you are describing it's a real mixture of French and English they keep the French structure and they put English words and the morphology is from French so they would conjugate the English verbs and it's exactly when you said I could show you the headlines it's the devil what do we do in school you open newspapers and they don't know what to do with Shia because as you say all the younger people that's what they speak it's exactly how you described it but it's a real mixture of French and English and it's not that they switch to English they go back to French not at all it's a mixture of English and French words and they say that they are rules so the kids learn Shia and they know how to and they don't make mistakes I don't know the rules I have to figure out what the rules are do you know the rules of Shia? well to me the rules as I said if you approach it from a metrics point of view other than the borrowings in terms of the loan words the modifications that take place I think it's really the grammar of Swahili into which everything else is protein so that's the grammar I would talk about however the morphology of it of the words in particular that requires a bit more study because I think there are patterns and in particular not in particular but when they are borrowed from other Kenyan languages it seems to me there is something interesting in terms of there should be some rules about how they come into Shang other than simply elongating the final syllable because you can I haven't done a full categorization but you will notice certain let's say nouns behaving slightly different from the verbs that have been borrowed from the language or descriptive words will have a bit of a way of being incorporated into the language but that's very interesting I'm wondering at these people they are fluent both in languages yes at one point I thought that maybe it was the French speakers and maybe because the French speakers obviously in Canada the French would be bilingual and the English wouldn't so I thought that maybe the French would speak Chiak I came across these videos where the speakers if you ask me I would say that natively their English is better than the French so it seems that it goes both ways the only difference I see there is that at this point here I think in the case of Shang there is actually not so much competence in those two chords there is competence but maybe I've always argued in favor of the model that we have of code mixing which is that one is competent in the two systems in order to be able to switch back and forth but now I'm beginning to think maybe there is an element of incompetence that leads to these just like any learner who is not fully conversely learning they will throw in words from the language they know I think that also is part of it a little difference I would say between the Chiak and the Shang I'm going to be working on Chiak so I'll be in touch with you sure definitely that would be lovely yeah thank you yes thanks for your really interesting presentation to you from these kind of emergent urban vernaculars of turning up all over the place the so called multicultural London English you know the French that Monique talked about there's French in Paris that's heavily influenced by Arabic but what's interesting here is the sort of ideology that somehow this has more status and push for recognition you don't get that at all absolutely I was curious about how you can export it to other centres where Kisway and Lee have spoken in Mombasa definitely yes and in fact that's the point I was trying to make in the very beginning maybe not very well that in spite of what you might say this non-standard speech of Nairobi it is actually still exerting interest to the native speakers so in Mombasa and Lamo in my last visit the youth are saying huyangbo people say mambo sasa fit which is shang now there is a very interesting paper coming up soon by somebody who has been working on that element of looking at the use of shang outside of Nairobi but to answer your question directly shang is spread all over and it has to do with the prestige of Nairobi of the capital this is important because many people most Kenyans look up to Nairobi for their model the point about this presumably in a lower status code gaining overturning the table I think that's where the important thing is in Kenya at least and it has to do with the demographics as well because now I think in Kenya even though the younger generation live under when I ask people who speak shang everybody tells me anybody who is 35 years old they speak shang and eventually I came to realize there is a bit of truth in that at least at the time but the numbers are so many they are becoming a lot more sophisticated than their elders so to speak the world trends are in their favor international fashions music of course because hip-hop is so ubiquitous but now it is being sung in the local languages obviously shang in Dar es Salaam Bongo Flavor they call it and it is also used in the Yus Kiswahili of Dar es Salaam they don't quite have a shang but they call it something slightly different and I think this is playing a role in giving prestige to this urban code of the youth because it can do more and as I said it can help you attain things that previously you couldn't economically that's what I mean the rappers in shang are making a lot of money they drive around just like a rapper they have lots of money by Kenyan standards anyway this very enterprising Kenyan people who have a website go shang they get funding from Fort Foundation from various international organizations to do whatever that is a source of income they are happy to do that they have realized there is a commercial there is an element that can assist them with this language that only a decade ago was seen as belong to Dar es Salaam and I think this is what we go to see the moment to see the trends and I think that's what they are doing as well we better join the band wagon and that's what they are doing what's about the ancient meaning of your talk yes with the socioeconomic classes the upper classes middle class so Nairobi is basically divided into east and west and the east lands actually it's called east lands is where shang originates is the poor section of the city low income to very low income the west lands is the upper middle class and very upper classes it's a very colonial city basically so that's how the city was divided in colonial times the Africans were putting one side in the different neighborhoods and then the Europeans were on the other side so this has continued as such and Angsh is spoken yes by the the upper classes young people although now because of that same point that shang is getting more prestige and more prestige when I was doing my interview I would find some very wealthy young men and women and I said do you speak shang? yeah of course I do and then I said say a few things they're just talking angsh they don't really know but they would like to because street credential street cred as they call it you're sure you're in things you're not a softee because when you speak shang you're obviously classified as so yeah, shangsh Abdulaziz came up with this term some people disagree with it they simply say as I'm sort of telling you that even shang also is something on a continuum not something very distinct to be given an aim for itself so the same thing with angsh in fact is a reversal of the two because back in 1995 I think the term was coined from swahili swahili and and English presumably this is what produced sorry from English swahili and English the H presumably was just put in there for a reason it sounds better Abdulaziz coined this and reversed that around and called it angsh to give prominence to English as the matrix in my explanation so that's the only thing English upper class Kenyan English Kenyan educated English with swahili in throne in and a lot of other shang words but I don't focus too much on that I think shang I find it a lot more of interest there shang serves to fill the community gap created by variation in levels of competence and how this can be actually tried or tested and the other one is because if the idea is so there's so much variety of languages that are spoken and they're not so competent and so they create something extra instead of building on one or the other yes so I'm wondering what the logic of that could be of you know they're all speaking certain kinds of languages and certain and the upper class does that too and how would it be hard for them then to switch it to shang yeah I think I understand how this could fill a communicative gap yes okay I think I understand is a good question now what I mean here is that yes I'm talking about English and swahili mainly the national languages and the languages which you would be expected to use to communicate with people other Kenyans and linguistic backgrounds but as I said before kiswahili standard swahili which we watch on television which was on the news and which we learn in school is actually not widely spoken on the ground okay and people are very much aware of it there's some kind of stigmatization about the competent levels of kiswahili people keep complaining it's too hard I don't know enough vocabulary I get stuck in vocabulary when I'm trying to express myself fully in kiswahili so I throw in one word of English and so on and so forth the same thing applies for English I mean yes book English standard English people are learning everything in English in school but that's only in the classroom outside the classroom the English is not really there even in the upper classes it's more maybe in the upper classes you might use English more inside the home state but in the rest of the country most people will not be using any standard form within the community except maybe the vernacular okay but now the vernacular is stigmatized like all many other Kenyan-African languages you find that at least outside the household people are finding yes we have been led to believe that it is not polite to speak outside your mother tongue outside your household or outside your community that's what I mean by that gap is being filled by these other mixed code which comes out neutral because it has everything in it I mean if you measure this against what a standard variety is that no one ever used anyways then for the people that never used it it is a perception this problem doesn't arise because they speak 3-4 languages sounds more like an ideological problem not a practical problem because they've been conversing all the time in how many languages that's why it's so multi-competent in different languages I know to switch here to this there to that and there to that so then I'm not sure why there's a communicative gap and if the communicative gap but actually doesn't exist on the ground because why would you pick up a youth language that is seen as a lower class language to fill a gap that actually is not your gap but it's the gap of that's created through ideology that's why I'm asking how would you like test this the other one is what I was wondering about is this notion of people are conscious of something but I think that applied to the code mixes and codes which is right so we explained that there's a they use this as a contextualization device to create intimacy to create alignment solidarity I think it's interesting what you said that people feel that it's too complicated and I'm not sure I don't know enough vocabulary because it might be communicative but the term I'm thinking of is ownership appropriation and I'm not sure to what extent that's there but there is a history of Swahili and standardization of Swahili which goes back to colonial times and I wonder whether that's those sort of lingers and in some sense what we are seeing here is a community saying yes it's our language but it's our language on our terms on our terms I think so in that sense you're right it is ideological more than actually a question of actual normative competence in that sense the incompetence that is felt by the individual is linked to that point and the ideology behind it it's not my language and it's kind of linked to what is the data that is interview data is a meta judgment of you do some of the data is just collected spontaneously that's why I'm wondering which language is something to do with myself but don't worry I mean this is a long discussion I mean it goes back to precisely that point what you mean by Swahili if you ask somebody there's a lot of question and people mentioned their other context it's very much applicable also in South Africa but Zulu which is there's rural Zulu which is codified and has a grammar book and a textbook but nobody speaks it on the street and they say no by which they mean they don't speak this sort of codified rural thing and then they go to Zulu that's not really Zulu and then you know but it is of course Zulu but it's really that's in the battle of who owns Zulu and I think you're referring to that table that was very particular to the rural situation I think sorry it's self-report because it's a survey right that's right because it's a survey when you look at the categories in the survey that street, school and solidarity can be in all of them it can be but I asked them it's different you can use solidarity to speak Shang in school to whisper it to your classmates but so it's more like why not where I agree that this can be conflated at some point but I thought it's used to make a distinction because when I use mother tongue for example for example the category mother tongue or vernacular you can notice here it's not there because they are so loaded they are so loaded if you ask anybody what's your vernacular they almost feel offended somehow first language well this is a rural situation but in urban centers that becomes very complicated because now I prefer the household language because now the household language is not necessarily the mother tongue nor the father tongue so to speak in fact it's Shang a lot of times it's not it's difficult for that reason but my question I think the question earlier you were posing in addition to that I'm wondering why would somebody say this if they are computed in English and case Swahili for example is that more or less what you are also asking yes I think on that note actually we have to oh ok sorry ok thank you it's a good question thank you very very much