The evolution and economics of Sheng

Last week I visited young content developers Jose, Gathu, Kelvin and Duncan, all of Go Sheng Services (an emerging local content developer) at their offices on Argwings Kodhek Road. 

What was meant to be chit-chat on new online business models turned into a two-hour animated talk on the history of Sheng and how the emerging language has morphed into the preferred language of advertising in Kenya. 

Sheng, believed to have started in the early 1950s, is a Swahili-based creole that heavily borrows its phonology and corrupted vocabulary mainly from English and many European and other African languages. In fact, the word "Sheng" was coined from the two languages that it is mainly derived from: Swahili and English.  

It is said that the "h" was included from the middle of "Swahili because "Seng" would have sounded unusual. It is perhaps why the language is often attacked for corrupting English, and as a result blamed for failures in English in national examinations. 

Renowned columnist Philip Ochieng says the logic of the attack on Sheng seems to be that it has no recognisable grammar, adding that grammar is nothing but whatever the speakers of a language conventionally agree on.

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All the daughters of Latin — including French, Italian, Portuguese, Rumanian and Spanish — began as "Shengs" in the European backwaters of Rome’s sprawling empire.

Some Latin purists must have complained against the Latin Sheng of Iberia — the vernacular of Pontius Pilate.  

Sheng has, however, defied all logic and continuously morphed into a language for economics in Kenya. It is believed to have originated from the urban underclass of Nairobi, influenced in its formative stages by the Luo tribesmen who dominated jobs at the East African Railways and Harbours.   

The British preferred to hire Luo men, whom they described as large, strong and handsome. They were mostly manual workers in the labour-intensive railway work, mostly carrying coal for firing the rail engines. 

The Kikuyu at the time could not be trusted, as they were suspected to belong to Mau Mau. Sheng therefore borrowed heavily from the Dholuo language, with its original vocabulary being dominated by the letter “O” that is common in Luo words. 

Prior to the 1950s, Africans lived in Eastlands according to their tribal origin. The Luo mostly occupied Makongeni and Kaloleni, the Kikuyu lived in Bahati and other tribes lived in Jericho, Maringo and Mbotela. 

Housing in these areas was characterised by single 10ft x10ft rooms intended for one person. These types of housing undermined workflow at the railways, since most men kept travelling to their rural homes to see their families. 

WRATH OF PARENTS

To solve the problem of absenteeism, the British imported light-skinned prostitutes into Kenya from Tanganyika, mostly of the Chagga tribe, who are Bantu-speaking indigenous Africans and the third largest ethnic group in Tanzania.

They settled them in the Majengo area, in close enough proximity to Makongeni and Kaloleni to keep the workers busy and away from their families in the rural areas for long periods of time.

The prostitute strategy did not work for long as many of the workers ended up bringing their families to Nairobi. The children were faced with a language problem. Gossip about sex, lies and poverty filled the air to the extent that children had to find a means of communication to avoid the wrath of their parents for talking “bad things”. 

The new, young immigrants into the city started to coin new words that effectively prevented their parents from understanding what they were talking about. In the process, they renamed all places. For example, Kariobangi was Oriosh in Sheng. Likewise, Kangemi became Ongem.

The railway, therefore, is credited as one of the major drivers of the new language. The other drivers included the matatu industry, sports, FM stations, reggae music, mobile technologies and social media. 

SOCIAL HALLS AND BOXING

The matatu industry started a new Sheng to shield their passengers from being part of their conversation with the police. It was largely dominated by the Kikuyu. 

The letter "O", being foreign to their language, was replaced with "U", in the process renaming most places that started with the letter "O". Therefore Ongem became Ungem. If they were speaking on what to bribe the police, they could say, “Mukanje blue” (“Give him twenty shillings”).

FM stations have played a big role in shaping Sheng. Today’s broadcast journalists are predominantly young and familiar with Sheng. A call-in listener could say, “Man-U walitinga Asenali” (“Manchester United beat Arsenal”).

Sports, more specifically boxing and football, followed the matatu industry. For fear of their strategies spilling out to their opponents, Sheng became very localised in various social halls, leading to the fact that the Sheng of Makongeni could not be understood by the Sheng speakers of Bahati. This, however, was short-lived as the Frequency Modulation (FM) stations began to unify the language and created a more universal Sheng. Names for sports like football (futa) boxing (boka or boki), rugby (rudge) and running (nduthe) are widely used.

UNDER SURVEILLANCE

At the same time, reggae music was bringing different dimensions of Sheng. The Jamaican Patois, sometimes referred to as Jamaican Creole, was making its inroads into Africa through the work of such musicians as Jacob Miller (for example “Tenement Yard”). This is how a Sheng sentence like "Mabeast wako yadi" (The police are around) was created, to describe when they were under surveillance, and derived from some of Miller’s lyrics here below. 

Dreadlocks can't live in privacy

Anything him do, old nigga see

Too much watchie watchie watchie, too much su-su su-su su

Too much watchie watchie watchie, too much su-su su-su su

Sheng is today being universalised by the advent of social media. The advent of mobile technologies has helped to consolidate the creation of this new language. Through WhatsApp and other social media, there are more intense discussions and building of new vocabularies. A lot is being done through text and in the days to come, it may perhaps begin to pay attention to grammar.

What primarily started as a language for urban poor youths has spread across social classes and geographically to neighbouring Tanzania and Uganda. Duncan and his team are determined to develop a sustainable language, complete with the Institute of Sheng Language. 

Their crowd-sourcing platform ensures that they capture new dimensions of the language. Already Go Sheng has its first publication titled A History of Sheng Culture and Language: Tracing the Roots & Women’s Contribution.

THE ECONOMICS OF SHENG

Sheng fills the void that exists within mostly static, limited African languages that lack the infrastructure to keep pace with technological advancements.  In many parts of Kenya, Sheng has become the language of trade and business. Advertising agencies are raking in profits from the use of sheng.

Table 1: Examples of some Sheng words recently used in the mainstream media

Advertisers perhaps prefer to use Sheng because its brevity concisely delivers the message. Multinational corporations tend to like using Sheng in their adverts, possibly because a majority of Kenyans are young and more likely to understand Sheng. 

GOVERNMENT NOT LEFT BEHIND

Barclays Bank’s popular advert “Mkopo wa Salo” or “Borrow against your salary” could not have been made any better than it is. It communicates the message in just three great-sounding words. Even the usually conservative government has resorted to Sheng in its service delivery campaign, saying “Gava inakusort” or “The government will assist you”.

Go Sheng has employed 12 youths and they look forward to becoming the custodian of a new and dynamic language. The users of Sheng are more confident with the language that it is possible to extend the creativity in coming up with the language to other expressive creative aspects like film, storytelling and more as part of deepening the formalization of the language. In Sheng there is latent economic opportunities we can unlock.

As Nelson Mandela said, “If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his language, that goes to his heart.”

The writer is an associate professor at the University of Nairobi’s Business School and a former permanent secretary in the Ministry of Information and Communications.