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The future of Sheng in formal education
By Charlotte Simons
When speaking to my Kenyan friends who are of around the same age as I am (25 – 30 years old), all of them indicated that while they were attending primary and secondary school, Sheng was regarded a ‘bad language’ that was not supposed to be spoken in school, and preferably not even outside of the formal classroom setting. That has now started to change.
Both Kiswahili and English have been “hit by a wave of Sheng speakers”, who are mostly young adults and pre-adolescents.
In her article “The Effects of ‘Sheng’ in the Teaching of Kiswahili in Kenyan Schools” that was published in 2009, Clara Momanyi (Kenyatta University, Nairobi) argues that the role of Kiswahili can adequately perform the ideal role of a language in Kenyan society, as it serves as many of its inhabitants as possible. Indeed, Kiswahili transcends ethnic divides – just like Sheng does. It is non-ethnic. For this very reason, East African governments – including Kenyan government – have always supported the language. And indeed, over 80 percent of Kenya’s population understands Kiswahili.
However, Momanyi states how in Kenya’s recent past, both Kiswahili and English have been “hit by a wave of Sheng speakers”, who are mostly young adults and pre-adolescents. The exact origin of Sheng remains unknown, although linguists agree on the fact that it started in the poorer and slum areas of Nairobi.
The youth use Sheng to communicate among themselves in the subculture they have created for themselves.
By now, Sheng dominates the discourse of primary and secondary school children once they find themselves outside of the classroom, and it is also widely spoken by a variety of people: vendors in market places, street hawkers, public service vehicle drivers and street children, to name a few. And Nairobi is no longer the only city in which the code is spoken: it has spread to other major towns such as Nakuru, Eldoret and Mombasa. The youth in all of these places are from different ethnic communities and use Sheng to communicate among themselves in the subculture they have created for themselves.
Noteworthy to mention: a variety of Sheng exists that is called ‘Engsh’, which developed in the Westlands of Nairobi – a more affluent area than, for instance, Kibera. Where Sheng is based on Swahili structure and vocabulary, Engsh finds its origins in English, but with words from Kiswahili and other local languages.
Back to Sheng, which is still spreading – to the point where local politicians and TV stations have also started to incorporate the use of Sheng in their day-to-day communication. Still, most people in Kenya are of the opinion that Sheng interferes with standard Kiswahili and thus has negative effects on formal education in Kenya. Momanyi argues that this can be traced back to the fact that Sheng is socially stigmatised, since it has often been associated with hip hop musicians (such as Octopizzo), drug dealers and school drop outs. She states: “In the education circles, the code is gangster slang, a secret code associated with social misfits, is fluid and not easy to understand.”
Additionally, Sheng is unintelligible for most adults who are generally not in touch with registers in which the language is spoken. Teachers have complained about their students not being able to mark the boundaries between Sheng, Kiswahili and sometimes even English. On top of that, which is something that Octopizzo also mentioned when I interviewed him, many students are far more fluent in Sheng than standard Kiswahili.
To a certain extent, Sheng has interfered with “the performances of students in national examinations.”
Momanyi argues that research has shown that in primary schools across Kenya, pupils are skilled at speaking and writing standard Kiswahili. However, once they graduate in higher education, their communicative competence in Kiswahili is somehow low. Students are often no longer capable of easily switching from Sheng to Kiswahili, yet they somehow still comfortably switch from Sheng to their own mother tongues. So to a certain extent, Sheng has interfered with “the performances of students in national examinations.”
Still, one thing is certain: the spread of Sheng is inevitable. In Nairobi, many of the former street children who have now grown up to be adults speak Sheng as their main – and sometimes even only – language. This leads us to wonder whether the creolisation process of Sheng has not already started. According to Momanyi, research is needed in order to establish the extent to which Sheng is used across the country, in order for it to be qualified as a creole language.
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A casual conversation in Sheng, recorded for us by a couple of Charlotte’s friends in Nairobi.
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“Easich” in Sheng means “Easich” (a neighbourhood in Nairobi) in English.
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Another music video by Octopizzo, rapping in Sheng.
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“Vopo” in Sheng means “how are you?” in English.
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(Picture from Octopizzo’s official website.)
Henry Ohanga – artist name Octopizzo – started his career in the slums of Kibera, where he grew up, around ten years ago. He has by now released three albums and is one of Kenya’s most successful music artists. When he started his music career, his main aim was to give people a better impression of his hood – Kibera – and give people living in Kibera a sense of pride about where they come from. That’s means he has also rapped in Sheng from the very beginning. Octopizzo is also one of the main pioneers in Kenya’s music industry who consistently creates new Sheng words, that he manages to spread through his music.
Charlotte got the chance to interview him, as she befriended him when she was living in Nairobi up until earlier this year. This is part three of her interview with Octopizzo.
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(Picture from Octopizzo’s official website.)
Henry Ohanga – artist name Octopizzo – started his career in the slums of Kibera, where he grew up, around ten years ago. He has by now released three albums and is one of Kenya’s most successful music artists. When he started his music career, his main aim was to give people a better impression of his hood – Kibera – and give people living in Kibera a sense of pride about where they come from. That’s means he has also rapped in Sheng from the very beginning. Octopizzo is also one of the main pioneers in Kenya’s music industry who consistently creates new Sheng words, that he manages to spread through his music.
Charlotte got the chance to interview him, as she befriended him when she was living in Nairobi up until earlier this year. This is part three of her interview with Octopizzo.
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“Blanda” in Sheng means “to make a (costly) mistake” or “to mess up” in English.
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(Picture from Octopizzo’s official website.)
Henry Ohanga – artist name Octopizzo – started his career in the slums of Kibera, where he grew up, around ten years ago. He has by now released three albums and is one of Kenya’s most successful music artists. When he started his music career, his main aim was to give people a better impression of his hood – Kibera – and give people living in Kibera a sense of pride about where they come from. That’s means he has also rapped in Sheng from the very beginning. Octopizzo is also one of the main pioneers in Kenya’s music industry who consistently creates new Sheng words, that he manages to spread through his music.
Charlotte got the chance to interview him, as she befriended him when she was living in Nairobi up until earlier this year. This is part two of her interview with Octopizzo.
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Kaligraph Jones (Octopizzo’s arch rival) is another rapper incorporating Sheng into his music.
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Sheng as a decolonizing tool
By Charlotte Simons
While preparing content for this blog over the past few weeks and talking to my Kenyan friends over WhatsApp about what Sheng meant to them on a personal level, I kept coming back to the conclusion that Sheng in many ways functions as a decolonizing tool: it is a hybrid of different languages – African languages as well as European ones –, appropriated and made their own by those who use it, to the extent that it is no longer understandable to those on the outside. In many ways, it functions like a secret language.
Octopizzo: “Sheng is the only language that you can speak with a hundred people and you will never even know their tribe.”
It also transcends the different ethnicities living in Nairobi. No matter if a youth is of Luo, Kikuyu, Taita or Kisii descent, all young people speak Sheng. Octopizzo, whom I interviewed for this research project, explained to me over the phone: “Sheng is our second language, for all of us. (…) Sheng is the only language that you can speak with a hundred people and you will never even know their tribe.” Instead, the type of Sheng people speak is mostly determined by the neighbourhood that they’re from in Nairobi. The type of Sheng spoken in the Eastlands or Westlands, for instance, is different from the Sheng spoken in Kibera.
On the one hand, Sheng transcends the division between different ethnicities, while on the other hand, it emphasises the beauty in Kenya’s ethnic diversity by appropriating words from all the different languages that can be found there.
According to Octopizzo, Sheng in recent years has been appropriating less and less English words, and more and more words originating from native Kenyan languages, like Luo. When I asked him about the reasoning behind that, he replied: “Sheng has changed a lot in the last ten years. (…) People are starting to be proud of being African.” According to him, music artists in Kenya used to really hide which tribe they came from. Their fan base would be ethnically diverse, so as a musician, you would want to avoid solely focusing on your own ethnic group.
“But now, people are starting to embrace who they really are.” This essentially means that on the one hand, Sheng transcends the division between different ethnicities, while on the other hand, it emphasises the beauty in Kenya’s ethnic diversity by appropriating words from all the different languages that can be found there.
Sheng really went through a transformation in recent years. According to Octopizzo, it originated in Kibera and mainly started out as “a crime language. And then it became too popular. (…) Now, it’s being used by banks and big corporations advertising in Sheng to attract young people,” which he isn’t particularly a fan of himself, although he fully understands the power that Sheng holds: “The young people of Kenya don’t even know how they did it. It’s so powerful.”
Although Sheng is an exclusive language, once you’re in, anyone can contribute. “With Sheng there is not one creator. Some kid in, like, Siaya, can come up with a word and it spreads and we use it.”
And although Sheng is an exclusive language, once you’re in, anyone can contribute. Octopizzo explained: “With Sheng there is not one creator. Some kid in, like, Siaya, can come up with a word and it spreads and we use it.” The main reason he himself invents new words and then spreads them via his music, is because it creates curiosity amongst his audience. “Like, ‘Oh, what do you mean?’ (…) With Sheng, the lesser people know the new words, the cooler. Once many people know the new word, it becomes uncool – and we switch.”
Another reason behind the invention of new Sheng words, as Octopizzo explained it, is to exclude certain people from following the conversation, such as the police, or older generations. “If parents are starting to know the slang, we switch. They don’t have to always know what’s happening.”
He concludes: “Once you start using it, it’s like being a coder. And I’m the master coder.”
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“Jordo” in Sheng means “bald head” in English.
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“Mless” in Sheng means “young” or “junior” in English.
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(Picture from Octopizzo’s official website.)
Henry Ohanga – artist name Octopizzo – started his career in the slums of Kibera, where he grew up, around ten years ago. He has by now released three albums and is one of Kenya’s most successful music artists. When he started his music career, his main aim was to give people a better impression of his hood – Kibera – and give people living in Kibera a sense of pride about where they come from. That’s means he has also rapped in Sheng from the very beginning. Octopizzo is also one of the main pioneers in Kenya’s music industry who consistently creates new Sheng words, that he manages to spread through his music.
Charlotte got the chance to interview him, as she befriended him when she was living in Nairobi up until earlier this year. This is part one of her interview with Octopizzo.
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We interviewed Dennis Ombachi (28), one of Charlotte’s friends in Nairobi, for this research project. Dennis is a professional rugby player, played for the Kenyan national team up until a while ago and even participated in the 2016 Summer Olympics. He’s recently made a career switch and just started his own catering business. Dennis lives in Jamhuri, Nairobi, which borders Kibera, and uses Sheng on a day-to-day basis.
In this fragment, he explains how Sheng can work as a unifier.
We apologise if the audio quality isn’t top notch; Dennis needed to use a WiFi network in order to conduct the interview, which was in quite a noisy area of town.
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We interviewed Dennis Ombachi (28), one of Charlotte’s friends in Nairobi, for this research project. Dennis is a professional rugby player, played for the Kenyan national team up until a while ago and even participated in the 2016 Summer Olympics. He’s recently made a career switch and just started his own catering business. Dennis lives in Jamhuri, Nairobi, which borders Kibera, and uses Sheng on a day-to-day basis.
In this fragment, he explains why Sheng is generational.
We apologise if the audio quality isn’t top notch; Dennis needed to use a WiFi network in order to conduct the interview, which was in quite a noisy area of town.
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WhatsApp interview with Lillit, a German national who speaks Sheng
Through Mira, one of our class mates, we got in touch with Lillit, a German national who resided in Nairobi for some time and learned to speak Sheng there. Sandra conducted an interview with her over WhatsApp.
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