The Fate of Swahili

To understand the contemporary implications of foreign cultural appropriation, namely that of the English language in Kenya, one must understand the cultural inroads of colonial settlement, which so fundamentally altered language and cultural dynamics to shatter traditional Swahili, and in doing so, allowed a modern reaffirmation of western culture via indirect and subversive channels. Moreover, this reaffirmation of hegemonic power relations has permitted a new era of neo-colonialism, though subtle and discreet. This usurpation of power is less political than it is cultural.

As argued by David Cannadine, a professor of History at the University of London, the 1920s and 1930s saw a new generation of disaffected patricians, who were alienated by an unsettling mass urban democracy, challenging an established hierarchical and ordered society.  Thus, to perpetuate and preserve this ordered, and privileged life, colonial settlers sought to re-create their leisured, landed and stately lives in Kenya.  And in the short forty years prior to Kenyan independence, had conditioned a new set of cultural and class values, which extended into the education system, and saturated nearly all facets of society.  Education served as the tool of dissemination, which would conveniently preserve British perceptions of honor, history, class, and so forth.  Those Kenyans who were privileged, or financially capable of attending secondary or post secondary institutions, did and continue to study in an environment that was and is characteristically English in nature and in language.

The English language has been understood as the avenue to social mobility and progress, a tool necessary in professional advancement achievable only through advanced education.  Those groomed in the halls of established English education maintain the highest levels of a disproportional Kenyan class structure.  Those without, have attempted to assert themselves through the English language and a superficial alignment with American culture, namely by reproducing aspects of Western music, dress and the media.  In doing so, there is the recent development of "sweng", a street youth-language that blends colloquial English language with Swahili.  The adoption of English has produced some unsettling affects on traditional Swahili language, namely the forfeiting of bygone phrases and cultural definitions that have little substance or meaning in Kenya's culturally and linguistically awkward future.