By: Felipe De la Garza
English in Kenya
Kenya• Capital & largest city: Nairobi
• Population (2013 estimate): 44,037,656 (31st)
• Independence from Great Britain December 12, 1963
• Official languages: Swahili, English
• Spoken languages: 69
• Literacy rate: 85%
Indigenous languagesEnglish is usually second-language in Kenya, therefore the way it is spoken (pronunciation, phonetics and grammar) depends
on the structure of the mother language of the speaker 60+
Indigenous languages are usually divided into:
• Niger-Congo
• Cushitic/Sudanic
• Afro-Asiatic
Kiswahili• Originates in Eastern African coast
• Bantu language with Persian & Arabic influence
• Muslim commercial route
• 1000a.d.
• 1884-1885 Berlin congress
• 1895 British protectorate
Kiswahili• Mombasa original capital
• Spoke Kiswahili
• British colonizers learned swahili to control people
• 1907 Capital moved to Nairobi (less swahili influence)
• Inland there are more languages
• Missionaries🙏 spread Kiswahili among tribes as a mother tongue
Kiswahili
• Most of the languages of southern and eastern Africa are closely related and belong to the Bantu family within Niger-Congo.
• Many of these are tone languages that also contain numerous affixes.
English
• The mother tongue of individual African speakers affects their accent strongly
• double pronouns, such as "me myself, I don't know," or "we, ourselves".
English Accent
• Problems with /r/ and /l/
• Nasal sounds
• Vowels
• Diphthongs
• lamb ram, face dress, mouth moth, Show so, beat bit
English Today
!
• Lyrics are most often in Swahili and English
• English is widely spoken in commerce, schooling and government
Sheng
• Sheng is a Swahili-based mixed language
• originating among the urban underclass of Nairobi, Kenya,
• influenced by many of the languages spoken there.
• earthwire -> neck tie
• shower -> rain
• pack -> live (somewhere)
• dame, shore (sho-reh; from "shawty") -> girl, chick
• Sasa?" (How are you now?), to which the reply might be "Fit sana", where "fit" comes from English t "sana" means "very" in Swahili.
Bibliography
• East African English - Hermann Ingi Ragnarsson
• http://mariefahy.blogspot.com/2011/05/kenyan-english.html
• http://www.theguardian.com/education/2012/oct/16/kenya-debates-language-identity
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