The 'Advent' of Kenyan English

Finally, the first Kenyan blog on language!! With sociolinguists insisting that a distinct variety of English is slowly developing, (yes, you guessed it right, Kenyan English!!) although we purport to be speaking British English. That doesn’t mean you should start minding whether each word you utter is British or American; in fact one of the features of Kenyan English, (un)fortunately is that it is confused in that it doesn’t mind whether it is American or British. This is of course to the detriment of the purity of the English language, the “standard English” if you like.

                                      Kenyan English, a mishmash of British and American English

Apart from heavy borrowing from vernacular languages (especially the Bantu languages) and Kiswahili, one distinctive feature of Kenyan English is redundancy which will be what our first blog post will be aboutJ.

Trust me this is the most annoying feature! It can’t get worse than appearing in motivation letters, you don’t want to wait for feedback forever from your ‘would be employer’, do you? So let’s examine the phrases worst hit by redundancy!

         i.            Me, I don’t like….. : occurs mostly in spoken language, Nairobi ladies are the worst hit, right? No offence :-D . Do I really need to emphasize how wrong repetition of the subject is? Just say ‘I don’t like….’ And spare yourself the trouble of saying me and making a grave grammatical mistake.

       ii.            Write down these notes: even teachers of English (not English teachers) are culprits here! If something is written, hasn’t it been taken down? Take down some notes! Write some notes!

      iii.            Repeat again! Do I really need to say anything about this! It is not only wrong but also rude. Mostly occurs in the spoken language in the imperative.

     iv.            Few in number: what else can something be few in apart from number? Few already shows we are speaking about number thus in number is redundant.

       v.            Enter in: please consult your dictionary and tell me if you will see in in the definition of enter. Besides, you cannot “enter out”!

     vi.            Add something additional: only do this if you are looking for repetitions and alliterations in poetry!

    vii.            End result: results only come at the end and never the beginning, end is thus repetitive.

  viii.            Final outcome: isn’t this synonymous to end result? The same explanation thus applies!

     ix.            Still remains: what remains is what is still there. Still is evidently redundant.

       x.            Although they are friends, the have nothing in common with each other.

Although they friends, they have nothing in common.

Adding “with each other” to “in common” is superfluous!

     xi.            Return back: returning is taking back, back is thus very unnecessary.

    xii.            Postpone to a later time: we need to get serious now, can something be postponed to an earlier time?? So this phrase does not make sense. Postponing is late enough! Don’t make it later.

  xiii.            Protest against: protesting is usually to express opposition, against is redundant. Kenyan members of the fourth estate are as guilty as charged here!

  xiv.            An unexpected surprise: if it is expected then it cannot be a surprise, so once you say surprise we already know it was unexpected. Spare yourself the pain of being redundant.

   xv.            Plan ahead: it’s as if people plan ‘back’, no further comment about this one.

  xvi.            Foreign import/local export: an import is implicitly foreign by virtue of coming from a different country, and an export is implicitly local!

xvii.            Invited guests: 90% of speakers and entertainers in Kenyan ceremonies are guilty here. A guest is an invited person, that makes invited redundant in this phrase. Saying invited guests is as ridiculous as saying uninvited gatecrashers.

xviii.            Basic essentials/fundamentals: the three are more or less synonymous, thus choose to say basics, fundamentals or essentials, otherwise you will be accuse you of being redundant.

  xix.            I have….of mine: of mine is evidently redundant.

   xx.            The reason why……was because….: when you start a sentence with the reason why be sure to use that instead of because to avoid being redundant.             

I know having to read such a list might not be your cup of tea, so I stop there. It’s worth reading though. And that is just a tip of the iceberg, there are many other 'mistakes' unique to Kenyan English as well as phrases that lack a "semantic bearing" (NEVER start a sentence with a conjunction, though I just did). There is a plethora of common redundancies, the list is inexhaustible.  As a Kenyan I am not to the same mistakes brought by Kenyan English, so correct me!

Have a great weekend ahead, won’t you?