Effects of Language Spread on a People’ Phenomenology: The Case of Sheng’ in Kenya

Sheng’, an evolving Kenyan language has been blamed for a myriad of things by parents and teachers in the local communities.  Among these are: Loss of paternity and patrimony, these being the identity and connection to any particular roots among the youth, especially the urbanite youth. This Kiswahili-based pidgin-like language is blamed for having negatively impacted its speakers’ affinity to their past, the feeling of their continuity and their ethnic legacy as passed on from one generation to another. There is evidence too, that speakers of Sheng’, especially those of the second generation, meaning those whose parents also speak it, have developed monostylism thus reducing the number of stylistic variants in their linguistic repertoire. Sheng’ has also been blamed for its speaker’s poor learning and mastery of other languages. But, can it be wished away? In this paper, I will first discuss the distribution and spread of Sheng’ in Kenya, and secondly, I will show the effects of Sheng’ on its speakers’ phenomenology, patrimony and paternity. I will conclude by suggesting ways in which language spread can be a useful element to society and by showing how Sheng’ can co-exist with tens of other languages spoken in Kenya, without negatively impacting on its speakers. Key words: sheng, phenomenology, patrimony, Kiswahili, Keny

Mother tongue and education in Africa: Publicising the reality

This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited. The electronic version of this article is the complete one and can be found online at: http://www.multilingual-education.com/content/4/1/18Varied realities surround the use of mother tongue education in Africa. These realities are entrenched in the attitudes and misconceptions that have gone unchallenged due to inadequate literature on the successful use of mother tongues in the classroom and beyond. The realities discussed in this paper include the frustrations of children introduced to education in a foreign language; misconceptions about the success of mother tongue education; educational benefits of mother tongue education; and mother tongues and enhanced economic opportunities. The foci of this paper are the success stories from Africa and the economic benefits in the use of the mother tongue in creative media or economies. These success stories are a way of getting to stakeholders to invest in mother tongue education for there are returns on such investment. The stories are also a way of challenging scholars to get out of the conference rooms and do something gainful with the mother tongues