Engsh is a
cant in
Kenya
Kenya, officially the Republic of Kenya, is a country located in East Africa. With an estimated population of more than 52.4 million as of mid-2024, Kenya is the 27th-most-populous country in the world and the 7th most populous in Africa. ...
whose base language is
English that includes borrowings from spoken urban Kenyan
Swahili.
While
Sheng, a mostly Swahili-based
AUYL,
is rooted in the poor eastern neighborhoods of Nairobi (where it has become a mother tongue),
[ Engsh is English-based][ and is spoken in the more affluent Westlands area.][ It is "a youth register that keeps tabs on American slang and rap music", and sufficiently different from Sheng to be treated separately, according to linguist Erik Kioko.]
See also
* Kenyan English
* Sheng slang
Sheng is primarily a Swahili and English-based cant, slang, perhaps a mixed language or creole, originating among the urban youth of Nairobi, Kenya, and influenced by many of the languages spoken there. While primarily a language of urban yo ...
References
Bibliography
*
Further reading
*
*Barasa, Sandra Nekesa, and Maarten Mous. "Engsh, a Kenyan middle class youth language parallel to Sheng." ''Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages'' 32, no. 1 (2017): 48-74.
*Kaviti, Lillian. "From Stigma to Status-Sheng and Engsh in Kenya's Linguistic and Literary Space." ''Matatu'' 46 (2015): 223ff.
*Mous, Maarten, and Sandra Barasa. "Kenya: Sheng and Engsh." In ''Urban Contact Dialects and Language Change'', pp. 105–124. Routledge, 2022.
External links
Swahili-based pidgins and creoles
Languages of Kenya
Cant languages
African Urban Youth Languages
{{Kenya-stub