Kenyan English

Alfred Buregeya

• Publisher: De Gruyter Mouton
• Year: 2019
• eBook ISBN: 9781501500978
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Linguistics
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

English in Kenya is a stable post-colonial variety that is used as an inter-ethnic lingua franca in private domains, is the medium of instruction as well as the language spoken in parliament and court rooms. Yet so far no comprehensive research monograph on Kenyan English has been published that surveys its characteristic linguistic features. The present book closes this gap by giving a full description of the characteristic linguistic features of Kenyan English.

The book provides an in-depth overview of Kenyan English phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics and pragmatics and also gives a meticulous account of the diachronic evolution of this post-colonial variety.

1 A brief history of English in multilingual Kenya

Good historical accounts of English in Kenya are already available, e.g. in Gorman (1974), Mazrui and Mazrui (1996), Skandera (2003: 8–15), Schmied (2004a), Schneider (2007: 189–197), Higgins (2009: 21–28), and Hoffmann (2010). Schneider’s (2007) and Hoffmann’s (2010) articles offer accounts which are structured similarly, and very clearly, along the lines of the Dynamic Model of how new Englishes have evolved, a model associated with Edgar W. Schneider and first propounded in Schneider (2003). In both Schneider (2007) and Hoffmann (2010), English in Kenya is said to have gone through a first phase, also referred to as the “foundation” phase (from the 1860s to 1920), during which Kenya had its first, and quite limited, contact with English; then through a second phase, referred to as the “exonormative stabilization” phase (from 1920 to the late 1940s), during which English was more widely spoken in Kenya by a “stable” community of British settlers, whose “written and spoken English as used by educated speakers” had to be, as an external norm, the “accepted […] linguistic standard of reference” (Schneider 2003: 245); and, finally, through a third phase, referred to as the “nativization” phase, “the central phase of both cultural and linguistic transformation”, one which, in the case of Kenya, has gone on from the late 1940s to the present, according to the two authors. Since it is beyond the scope of this chapter (and the whole book at large) to be an argument for or against the Dynamic Model, it will take into account the historical events that have shaped Kenyan English through the three phases, but refer to them in purely historical terms of “pre-independence” and “post-independence” periods.

1.1 The pre-independence period

Roughly, this is a period during which there was no enthusiasm from the British occupiers and colonizers for promoting English. This period can be divided into three sub-periods: 1) before Kenya’s status as an official British colony, 2) from the official-colony status to just after World War II, and 3) between after World War II and Kenya’s independence.

1.1.1 Before Kenya’s status as an official British colony

This sub-period runs from the time of the first contact of Kenya with English to 1920, when Kenya’s status changed from that of East African Protectorate to that of official colony. It is a period during which Kenya came into contact with English, but limited contact. Schmied (2004a: 919) notes that “English came late to East Africa”. All the historical accounts cited above mention the second half of the 19th century as the first real contact of Kenya with the English language. According to one account, “[u]ntil the end of the 19th century […] British interest in eastern Africa was largely limited to trade and, since the 1850s, to the expeditions of such British explorers as Richard Burton, David Livingstone, and John Speke” (Skandera 2003: 10). We are also reminded by Higgins (2009: 24) that “[t]he Germans were the first Europeans to occupy East Africa in the form of a protectorate over the Sultan of Zanzibar’s coastal possessions in 1885”, while “[t]he British occupied Kenya from the late 19th century, transforming Kenya from a protectorate to a British Crown colony in 1920”.¹

Going by Schneider’s (2007) account, it should be pointed out that well before the few years before the end of the 19th century, some amount of English had already been disseminated, even away from the coastal area, mainly by missionaries. Schneider (2007: 189) writes:

In the nineteenth century, contact with English in the interior grew but slowly. The impact of explorers was restricted and not lasting. Missionaries brought English with them, and started teaching and spreading it systematically. However, they also, and in many cases primarily, used indigenous languages, chiefly Kiswahili, already an established lingua franca, for evangelization. In some cases soldiers, like the King’s African Rifles, also disseminated English […].

Schneider adds that “[…] for a long time, education was left to the missions, as the State did not want to spend money on it and the settlers were primarily interested in their profits” (2007: 189).

1.1.2 From 1920 to just after World War II

This sub-period witnessed an influx of British settlers in Kenya, which increased the number of English speakers. Paradoxically, this greater number did not mean a greater dissemination of the English language beyond the settler community. This is what Schneider (2007: 191) says about this period: “British settlers kept immigrating in substantial numbers, and English became firmly established as the language of administration, business, law, and other higher domains in society”. Since the colonial rulers needed the assistance of some locals, they “trained a small indigenous elite as administrators but essentially were not interested in disseminating the English language” (2007: 191). They were not because “[t]he settlers in particular are reported to have resisted the spread of English to Africans on a larger scale, deliberately using kiSettla, a reduced form of Kiswahili, instead. Many of them were aware that knowledge of the dominant language means access to power, and that they did not want to share” (191). Mazrui and Mazrui (1996: 272) use strong terms to refer to this apparently paradoxical situation: “In Kenya, the presence of a strong British settler community was initially a curse rather than a blessing to the spread of English”.

But it was not just the colonial administration and the settler community at large that were not keen on disseminating English. “Even the three British mission societies […] did not use English in their evangelization” (Schmied 2004a: 920). The author explains how this preference for Kiswahili and indigenous languages over English fitted into a broader language policy: “It is important to remember that colonial language policies did not favour English […] wholesale, but established a ‘trifocal’ or trilingual system with (a) English as the elite and international language, (b) the regional lingua franca [i.e. Kiswahili in the case of East Africa, for ‘intraterritorial’ communication] and (c) the ‘tribal’ languages or ‘vernaculars’ for local communication” (2004a: 921).²

1.1.3 Between after World War II and Kenya’s independence

As Hoffmann (2010: 290) puts it, “[a]fter the Second World War, the British Empire started to fall apart” after “[t]he role-model India became independent [in 1947], and shortly afterwards the Africans started demanding political rights as well”. In the particular case of Kenya this demand for political rights was most forcefully (and forcibly) expressed by the Mau Mau movement (composed mainly of people from the Kikuyu tribe) whose uprising, from 1952 to 1959, was about claiming back their land that had been taken by the white settlers.

Away from fighting for land, although still within the same broader context of, on the one hand, fighting for and, on the other hand, granting rights, the 1945–1963³ sub-period is one during which, in Kenya, the interests of both the colonial administration and the African nationalists converged, to the extent that both parties wanted more English for the indigenous populations. Schneider (2007: 192) offers an explanation for this:

The stable colonial status, with its clear separation of [settler] and [indigenous] strands, was concluded by the aftermath of World War II. Africans returning from the war demanded political rights, including language education […]. The British were reasonable enough to understand that independence of their African colonies would come before too long. In a sharp turn of their policy, their goal now was to “modernize” these countries and prepare them for independence (amongst other things by teaching English on a broader scale) […].

What was the “educational language policy and practice”, to use Gorman’s (1974) terms, is summarized in the following statement:

In summarizing the state of the existing school system [,] the 1948 report [⁴] observed that in the past the language of instruction in sub-elementary schools was the vernacular, “but from standard 3 onwards Swahili is taught as the lingua franca of the Colony and has been the medium of instruction in junior secondary schools, although it is being rapidly replaced by English”. (Gorman 1974: 428)

Although it transpires that already before the war the Beecher committee had, according to Gorman (1974: 427), recommended that “English should take the place of Swahili as the colony’s lingua franca in as short a time as practicable” (while at the same time recommending that “more emphasis should be placed on the teaching of the vernacular languages”), it was not until after the war, in 1948, that the Advisory Council on African Education in Kenya “recommended the adoption of the report” (1974: 427). And it was only in 1950 that the “Proposals for the Implementation of the Recommendations of the Report on African Education in Kenya [were] published as Sessional Paper No. 1 of 1950”, during the debate on which “it was affirmed that the ‘language policy in the schools is that English shall be adopted as soon as possible in the post-primary classes’” (1974: 430).

The suggestion that African nationalists wanted more English after the war can be illustrated by the position of one of them, Mr Ohanga, who sat on the Legislative Council that discussed the proposals mentioned above, and who is reported to have “stated in [the] debate [that took place in August 1950] that ‘I should like to say that for a long time very many of us have pressed that the teaching of English should be at an early stage and the … general policy of the country has not always been sympathetic to this view … ’” (Gorman 1974: 430). Gorman further reports that “[i]n the early 1950s the trend for English to be used as a medium of instruction in the primary schools in urban and rural areas increased, although it was admitted in the Education Department Report for 1952 that ‘possibly the transition was premature in the more backward areas’” (1974: 431). And the author further notes that “[i]n 1953 English became the compulsory medium in the examination held at the end of the eighth year of primary education” and goes on to comment that “[t]his was of course a most significant development” (1974: 432). The significance of this lay in the fact that English, which until then had not even been the language of junior secondary schools, had so quickly become the language of even primary school, albeit the very end of it.

We are further informed by Gorman (1974: 435) that “[in 1958] many schools did in fact begin the teaching of English in the second year [of primary school] though the majority began it in the subsequent year; and in most schools it became the medium of instruction in the sixth year”. Three years later, that is “[i]n 1961, the course [that had been decided upon in 1957 as a pilot course using English as the medium of education for Asian children in Nairobi] was adopted for general use in the schools and in the following year [i.e. 1962] all first year classes in Nairobi made the changeover” (Gorman 1974: 437). And “[t]he use of English as a medium of instruction continued to spread […]” so quickly that “[t]he number of English medium classes in African primary schools rose from 14 in 1962 to 290 in 1963” (1974: 437).

1.2 The post-independence period

This is a p...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Dedication
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• 1 A brief history of English in multilingual Kenya
• 2 Geography, demography, and cultural factors
• 3 Phonetics and phonology
• 4 Morphology and syntax
• 5 Lexis and semantics
• 6 Discourse features
• 7 Survey of previous work and annotated bibliography
• 8 Sample texts
• 9 Conclusion
• References
• Index