Sheng as Kenyan Swahili

(1) Sasa! Fiti! (2) Niaje? Poa! (3) Mambo? Poa! (4) Rada? Radua! (5) Jambo! Jambo! (6) Hujambo? Sijambo! (7) Shikamoo? Marahaba! These are probably the most common greetings and responses in Kenyan Swahili today, in descending order of frequency based on personal observation and feedback from a small group of respondents. The Standard Swahili (SS) greeting and response ‘ Hujambo/sijambo’ (6) is heard mostly in formal registers, addressing a meeting, and such. ‘ Sasa/fii ’ (3) is probably the oldest of Sheng greetings dating back to the 1970s. ‘ Rada/radua’ (4) is used mainly among the millennials, and is a recent coinage. Greeting (5) is a simplified form of the standard greetings in (6), and is used for marketing tourism, and among some Kenyans who do not mind or are unaware of these two facts about it. The ‘ Shikamoo/marahaba’ (7) form is heard among native Swahili speakers of the Kenya coast and Tanzanians. Elsewhere in Kenya, it is probably only used in Swahili lessons in a classroom setting where students are taught to greet the teacher in this highly formal way. Generally speaking, greetings (1)–(3) are widely used by Kenyans, cutting across age, gender and social class. They also prevail among the younger, native speakers of Swahili in the coastal cities of Mombasa or further up north in Lamu. Until more recent times, these were restricted to Sheng speaking, urban youth or Eastlanders, and were seen as too informal and even inappropriate in many contexts and registers outside youth groups. Although ‘deep’ Sheng talk is limited to certain in-groups and registers, its characteristic features that stood out in the past (vocabulary, pronunciations) are now much a part of general Kenyan Swahili (KS). In fact very many Sheng innovations have passed onto general KS such that they are no longer marked as belonging to in-group or youth registers, and are in fact no longer stigmatized by adult speakers. The following are examples, whose alternations with SS take place as ‘style shifting’ which is tailored to the ‘audience’ (Bell 1984) consisting of addressee and participants, both direct and peripheral ones (e.g. auditors or eavesdroppers). Even though many Sheng innovations are still regarded as ‘slang’ they have become so integral to KS that in some cases they completely overshadow some SS words or expressions.