Long time without an article; blame that on the intellectual assessment
I was undergoing for the last two weeks in a form we all don’t like however
endowed we are (read exams), anyway how about we speak about Sheng today?
This is a difficult one I must admit! It’s the kind of subject that
takes me too long to begin working on, wondering from which side I should start.
For a kick start, we must note that a good number of Kenyans will struggle a
lot to construct a grammatically correct sentence in English as well as in
Kiswahili, the two official languages. Tragic, right? Let us not even talk
about vernacular languages and the urban youth!
Sheng has over time gained legitimacy and wide acceptance even from the f
expected quarters while the opprobrium to which it had been subjected may have
reduced. Besides it has spread beyond Nairobi and is now commonly used in many
urban set ups around the country. In a country where language is considered to
be a means of identity, thus sometimes our names betray us at times, sheng may
be seen as a unifying language. But who does it bring together, different
communities? I bet not. The youth? May be! Why am I skeptic about sheng, you
realize the rich and the poor have their own varieties, in fact there is
another entity called Engsh. Sheng doesn’t achieve to unite communities and to
some extent even the youth. Your ethnicity isn’t measured by how well you can
speak your mother tongue but by where your ancestors hail from! Sheng only has
with it the possibility of unifying people simply because it gives users a
contemporary identity unlike standard language. Most new words in Sheng erupt
from Kenyan slums and “low class estates,” creating a barrier between the upper
class youth of the upper class and those of the lower class. We would be
therefore justified o conclude that apart from failing to provide a panacea of
negative ethnicity and bridge the gap by creating a common identity, sheng
creates another gap between the rich and the poor! After all, how could such a
hogwash language without an identity itself give people an identity?
For those of us who practice the noble profession, teaching and those
who sit in interview panels, we know sheng could just be another malady ailing
our youth. It pains to see someone garner a mere 10 out of 40 in a primary
school composition, or worse still the ever dwindling language grades in English
and Swahili that the Education minister will announce year in year out,
announcing the K.C.S.E results. Just like how much your grooming says about
you, or better still your hair style, so does the language you use. From the
school of thought that boys (not men) who wear stud earrings need an urgent
visit to Mathari mental hospital, I need not mention how one appears to be when
they use sheng at the wrong place at the wrong time for the right purpose. The pervasive
use of sheng should be curbed so that it can stop inhibiting the comprehension
of other languages.
Ghetto radio boasts to be the only sheng station in Kenya saying “your official sheng station” in English.
They couldn’t use sheng to communicate such a simple message in their slogan.
That is how unintelligible sheng is owing to its dynamism and constant
metamorphosing. Just when you thought you knew something in sheng, you are
already using archaic words. Sheng lacks its own lexicon and can only be used
in limited contexts. Try listening to Ghetto Radio Sheng news and listen to how
the presenter struggles to force some words to fit.
Sheng is a mishmash of different languages principally Swahili, English,
Gikuyu and Dholuo. Its use has had far reaching effects on other languages and
can only be comprehended by a few. Sheng is still a cryptolect, in every sense
of the word.
Sheng is only good to that artist who’s making a kill out of every album
he releases, its only good for that politician who wants to make an appeal to
the youth, and lie that he has their interests at heart, its only good for that
entity putting mega billboards in peri-urban areas! Otherwise it can be vile,
repugnant and can degrade you to look uncouth. Avoid using it by all means, if
you have to, toe the line of the grounds into which you shouldn’t carry along
this blemish.
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| Not even the Official Sheng Station Uses Sheng on its Advertisement Banners |
This would have been a basis for good debate except the author ended up being carried away by their own subjectivity that whatever they intend to illuminate is overshadowed by the need to prove some pre-conceived position.
ReplyDeleteAssertions such as "After all, how could such a hogwash language without an identity itself give people an identity?" add no value and are at best despicable.
In normal circumstances, I would not comment on articles like this, because I doubt the author intended to attract any serious audience. But my many colleagues whom we widely discuss Sheng as an important element of popular expression have made some observations. As someone has observed, the author "has a tunnel vision".