Sheng slang

Sheng is a language that is spoken in the slums of the big cities of Kenya. To outsiders or adults only sections or fragments of words are to be understood. It follows the widespread laws of youth language. The young people use eclectically the most common in the slum languages. In Nairobi, these are, for example, Swahili, Kikuyu, Luo, Luhya and Kamba, but also English. Grammar, syntax and vocabulary are mostly coming from the Swahili.

Development began in the seventies among young people in the slums of Nairobi. Sheng is now spoken in other major cities of Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda and is particularly among attendants and debt collectors often overcrowded collective taxis ( " matatus " ), the Manambas, as well as common among market traders or hairdresser in. Sheng has overcome the language barriers in popular broadcasts of radio, television and print media and has reached the high level language into individual words or phrases. In the newspapers sometimes find small dictionaries that translate Sheng.

It is particularly known in the rap and hip- hop music. The musicians in turn affect the Sheng with its neologisms and language variants. Similar Sheng Swahili thus assumes more and more the role of a lingua franca.

Examples

• Mother = masa
• Father = Mbuyu
• Money = bakes or chapaa
• Music = flava or mahewa
• I love you = nimekunoki
• House = Keja
• Class, school = aladhe
• Cop = mahindra / ponye