Introduction About Sheng

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Sheng emerged in the Eastern suburbs of Nairobi, probably in Kaloleni or Kibera (Mazrui, 1995:174), approximately forty years ago (Abdulaziz & Osinde, 1997:47). It has been described as slang or code-switching (Mazrui, 1995), as a pidgin (Githiora, 2002 and Shitemi, 2002, but see Abdulaziz & Osinde, 1997, who reject this view) and as a youth language (e.g. Abdulaziz & Osinde, 1997), and it has been related to the secret language used by Cartier jewellery necklaces pickpockets in the 1930s (Mazrui, 1995). Over time, Sheng has spread to most other urban areas of Kenya. It is spoken and understood by people younger than forty of all social classes, including university lecturers and students. Although public opinion regarding Sheng is frequently negative, rappers enjoy great success in all social classes when performing in Sheng (cf. Githiora, 2002). Several FM radio stations broadcast in Sheng, and the code is making its way into literature, as for example in the magazine Kwani, in which young up-and-coming writers publish their work.

Linguistically, the grammatical structure ...
... of Sheng is based on Kiswahili, and its lexical items originate in Kiswahili, several indigenous Kenyan languages (e.g. Dholuo or Kikuyu) and English. The following example gives a first indication, of what Sheng looks like. The example translates as 'Please teacher, do not beat me I am late because of the bus.' It contains three lexical items which originate in English but have been altered: tichee, which derived from 'teacher', but, altered from 'bus', and let in ilinileitisha from 'late'1. As Kang'ethe Iraki (2004:57) explains, these alterations result from the fact that Sheng adapts borrowed items to the Kiswahili syllabic structure. As a consequence, bike, taken from English, becomes baiki, and chokra, taken from Hindi, changes to chokora. But frequently, 'borrowings can also be modified either by reducing the number of or inverting the syllables. For instance, Basketball, Nairobi, zamani (early), and Safari give rise to bake, Nai, zamo and sqfo.' The words zamo and safo also point towards a further characteristic of Sheng: as Abdulaziz & Osinde (1997:57) point out, '[s]ome of the most preferred sounds are o, sh, ny, e, and T, which give Sheng its uniqueness. 'The sound o, perhaps from Dholuo influence, is quite common; it normally simplifies difficult pronunciation and gives words a Sheng quality.' Inversion is more subtle. Mother was matha in the 60s; then in the 90s, another transformation occurred and matha mutated to masa, and finally to sama.

Table 1 presents a number of Sheng words which indicate the particular flavour achieved by strategies such as clipping words, inverting syllables, and adding sounds/letters to individual lexemes. At the levels of morphology and syntax, Sheng also makes a number of changes to the system of its underlying language Kiswahili. Kang'ethe-Iraki (2004) points out that verbs Cartier Jewelry are frequently not marked for the past tense and that relative pronouns are often left out.

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