Engsh

Engsh is a cant in Kenya 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

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