The new urban youth language Yabâcrane in Goma (DR Congo)

2015 ◽  
Vol 10 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 235-259 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nico Nassenstein
Keyword(s):  
Urban Youth ◽  
Dr Congo ◽  
Youth Language

Morphological features of Kiswahili youth language(s): Evidence from Dar es Salaam, Goma, Lubumbashi and Nairobi

2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (s4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Nico Nassenstein ◽  
Paulin Baraka Bose
Keyword(s):  
Urban Youth ◽  
Structural Features ◽  
Dar Es Salaam ◽  
Morphological Features ◽  
East African ◽  
Verbal Morphology ◽  
Dr Congo ◽  
Register Variation ◽  
Identity Constructions ◽  
Youth Language

Abstract Since the late 1980s, linguists’ analyses of Sheng, the urban youth language from Nairobi, have led to the growth of a considerable body of literature. In contrast, only a few studies are available that cover other youth registers from the Kiswahili-speaking parts of Africa. While most of the available studies either deal with techniques of manipulation or with adolescents’ identity constructions, our paper intends to give a comparative overview of specific morphological features of Kiswahili-based youth languages. While certain characteristics of Sheng (Nairobi/Kenya), Lugha ya Mitaani (Dar es Salaam/Tanzania), Kindubile (Lubumbashi/DR Congo) and Yabacrâne (Goma/DR Congo) largely diverge from East Coast Swahili (hereafter ECS) in regard to their nominal and verbal morphology, they all share specific features. Focusing on (apparent) supra-regional developments and changes in Kiswahili, this preliminary description of some structural features that transcend all four youth language practices aims to provide comparative insights into urban register variation, approaching East African youth languages from a micro-typological perspective.

Manipulation in late life

2019 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 45-62 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nico Nassenstein
Keyword(s):  
Language Use ◽  
Later Life ◽  
The Elderly ◽  
Old People ◽  
Dr Congo ◽  
Modal Particles ◽  
Age Related ◽  
Strong Focus ◽  
Powerful Means ◽  
Youth Language

Abstract While youth language constitutes a well-researched field of study, the linguistic manipulations of old people remain understudied. In an innovative approach, the present paper therefore looks at confusing and allegedly unintelligible narratives and conscious linguistic manipulations, silliness and concealing strategies in language as employed by elderly speakers of Kinyabwisha, Kinande, Kihunde and Kiswahili in Eastern DR Congo. A secret cursing register among Banyabwisha, often accompanied by practices of spitting, is analyzed; I also discuss elderly speakers’ confusing stories narrated to younger people, the use of secret modal particles that are restricted to people of old age, and finally I discuss the strategic inclusion of silliness in old speakers’ utterances. All these are analyzed in a theoretical framework of the secret agency and power in language use that mark the agency and wittiness of the elderly in Eastern Congo. With this first overview of elderly speakers’ language manipulations I aim to show that linguistic manipulation is not necessarily age-related, and that concealment strategies in language can occur as agentive and powerful means of social differentiation in later life as well. This preliminary introduction furthermore suggests a strong focus on silliness in linguistic analysis (as also found in Kuipers 2007; Storch 2015, 2017).

The Invisible Niche of AUYL

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philip W. Rudd
Keyword(s):  
Urban Youth ◽  
Social World ◽  
Traditional Values ◽  
African Cities ◽  
Colonial Empire ◽  
African Youth ◽  
Colonial Order ◽  
Youth Language ◽  
Modern Identity ◽  
The Invisible

In African cities, postcolonial ambiguity and contradiction bombard speakers, who hybridize traditional values with new urban identities and successfully bridge the old to the new with African Urban Youth Language (AUYL), a term inclusive of argot, slang, and register usage. Sheng, the AUYL from Nairobi, Kenya, exemplifies the metaphorical reversal of the old colonial order, symbolizing an invisible niche binding speakers neither to the traditional ethnic role nor to the old colonial empire and providing a sense of cosmopolitanism. African youth construct this new and modern identity, but the elites, seeing only fragmented nonstandard usage, treat the AUYL as illegitimate in order to render it nonexistent. This sociocultural chapter explores grammatical tendencies and lexical manipulations to disclose how AUYL is a “stylistic practice” (Eckert 2008) or bricolage (Hebdige 1979) that empowers speakers to construct a more complex, and meaningful, postcolonial social world.

S'ncamtho Lexico-semantics and the Isichazamazwi sesiNdebele (ISN): Implications for Lexicography and Standardisation

2018 ◽  
Vol 8 (12) ◽  
pp. 1605
Author(s):  
Sambulo Ndlovu
Keyword(s):  
Primary School ◽  
Urban Youth ◽  
The Other ◽  
Youth Language ◽  
Linguistic Purism ◽  
Primary School Examination ◽  
Over Time

S'ncamtho is an urban youth variety which uses Zimbabwean Ndebele as its matrix language. The youth language has had influences on the Ndebele language over time. This article argues that Ndebele benefits from S'ncamtho, its urban youth variety in terms of vocabulary although efforts at linguistic purism often moderate this contribution. The article avers that S'ncamtho terminology creates synonyms and polysemy in some cases whereby S'ncamtho lexis become as popular as the Ndebele counterpart and in some cases the S'ncamtho lexemes are more popular. The article goes on to evaluate the treatment of popular S'ncamtho terminology in the only Ndebele monolingual dictionary Isichazamazwi seSiNdebele (ISN) and gives recommendations on standardising some S'ncamtho terminology in Ndebele. The article is motivated in part by the debate that arose after the S'ncamtho term for prostitute umahotsha was included in a grade seven (primary school) examination. However, looking closely at S'ncamtho and Ndebele it is not linguistically and socially possible for S'ncamtho and Ndebele to share space and speakers and remain independent of each other’s influences on the other.

Engsh, a Kenyan middle class youth language parallel to Sheng

2017 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 48-74
Author(s):  
Sandra Nekesa Barasa ◽  
Maarten Mous
Keyword(s):  
Urban Youth ◽  
Language Contact ◽  
Computer Mediated Communication ◽  
Social Dimension ◽  
Mediated Communication ◽  
Linguistic Change ◽  
Computer Mediated ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Status ◽  
Youth Language

Youth ‘languages’ are an important topic of research in the domain of linguistic change through language contact because the change is rapid and observable and also because the social dimension of change is inevitably present. Engsh, as a youth language in Kenya expresses not only modernity and Kenyan identity but also, the status of being educated, and it differs in this respect from Sheng, the dominant Kenyan youth language. The element of Engsh that expresses this aspect most directly is the use of a grammatical system from English whereas Sheng uses Swahili. In lexicon, Engsh draws upon Sheng and urban English slang. This is a first extensive description of Engsh. The social function of Engsh is interesting in that class is expressed in it, which is not often reported in African urban youth codes. Also the fact that Engsh is a non-exclusive register, which expands through its use in (social) media and most of all in computer mediated communication.

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