Keeping up with rapidly evolving Sheng language

By Harold Ayodo

The first thing Geoffrey Gathu does every morning is to upload latest Sheng words in a website that has become a darling of the youth.

There are more than 6,000 words in which some 2,500 are linked to idioms, synonyms and antonyms in www.sheng.co.ke.

“We have to be up-to-date with the rapidly evolving words to preserve the fastest growing language in the country,” Gathu says.

For starters, the word ‘Sheng’ was coined from two languages, English and Kiswahili — the source of most of its words — in the early 1970s among residents of Eastlands — Nairobi.

Like all slang, Sheng is mainly used by the youth and is part of popular culture that keeps evolving as words are moved into and out of slang use.

The language is so popular that some corporate firms are using it to market their products to reach majority youthful population with economic power.

The website

At the time of this interview, the website had 6,520 members, 39,297 searches and 2,302 mchongoano (humour).

Moreover, another 10,000 registered members are also in their Twitter and Facebook pages.

“More than 90 per cent of our content is generated by users and undergoes vetting by members before inclusion in the dictionary,” says Gathu.

Gathu, who is the head of content and social media, says majority of their members chat strictly in Sheng.

Gathu says their monthly hit rate now stands at 519,764 with more than 58,247 unique visitors.To further promote and preserve the language, the website also captures linguistic characteristics like etymology, word position, idioms and similes.

And the language is expanding in cyberspace with more forums coming up to discuss Sheng. One such forum is http://bonga.sheng.co.ke, which discusses topical issues in Sheng and http://crossword.sheng.co.ke is themed around subjects like names, estates or high school nicknames.

Benjamin Luta, who is in charge of creativity and strategy, says they have a lyrics component — http://lyrics.sheng.co.ke — that collects and archives content of local music in Sheng.

“We highlight and provide users with meanings and descriptions of the words,” Luta says.

On humour, the mchongoano front enables members to throw light jests at one another and vote for hilarious ones.

Research papers

Interestingly, there is a section dedicated to research papers written in Sheng.

“We constantly trawl the Internet collecting relevant research documents and uploading them,” Luta says.

Executive officer Kelvin Okoth says a need to demystify Sheng language and culture inspired the registration of Go-Sheng — a social enterprise — in 2010, which runs the site.

Its founder, Duncan Ogweno, who used to collect Sheng words in a handwritten manuscript in 1986 came up with the idea.

Unfortunately, his pet dog tore up the handwritten manuscript ten years later prompting the need for a permanent archive, hence the website.

Go-Sheng’s Rachael Olwanda says they rely on donor grants and personal money to keep the site going.

“Majority of their registered members are in the age group of 18 to 35 with a chunk from the Diaspora interested in keeping up-to-date with the language.

For those who blame poor performance in languages on Sheng, Ogweno has this to say: “We are not apologists for the language and culture...we are not out to defend it either. Sheng is here to stay,” Ogweno says.