The chief characteristic features or markers of Kenyan Swahili (KS) and Sheng are lexical and phonological, the two main sites of exchange in any language contact situation. But the speech codes also demonstrate morphosyntactic variation, with interesting implications for the direction and permanence of linguistic change in KS. Variations in Sheng or KS also reveal substrate influences from different Kenyan languages. This chapter identifies some of those features specific to Sheng talk which exist alongside but are distinguishable from general KS.

Phonological innovations

Although all sounds of Sheng are also found in Standard Swahili's inventory, some occur with greater frequency in Sheng, and in places where they do not in Standard Swahili (SS). The consonant sounds /sh/ (IPA: [š]) and /ch/ (IPA: [č]. occur frequently in final position of Sheng words (e.g. odush /oduš/ ‘dove’ or Kibich /kibič/ ‘Kibera’). This is different from SS (and all Bantu languages), which does not allow consonant endings. Sheng vowels also tend to be elongated when in final position (e.g. ochaa /ɔčaa/ ‘village, rural area’, ndɔmaa ‘arrowroot’, shugee /šugɛɛ/ ‘sugar’ and so on. Certain Sheng vowels are lower in articulation than their canonical counterparts, as we have already observed. Swahili's orthographic <e> and <o> used to write Sheng are phonetically IPA: [ɛ] and [ɔ], respectively. This is possibly an influence from Dholuo and Gikuyu, since they are ubiquitous in both languages, which also dominate in Sheng's primary ecology (Nairobi). Syllable reduction is also quite common, particularly by deletion of glides (y, w) resulting in a diphthong e.g. naweza > naeza; siwezi > siezi ‘I can/I can’t’; yenyewe > enyewe, etc. In many cases, bi-syllabic Swahili stems are reduced to monosyllabic ones in Sheng, e.g. sikiliza > skiza ‘listen’ or jisikia > jiskia ‘feel for oneself’. Final syllables are also likely to be deleted or replaced with long-V (heavy) single syllables. A prime example is the SS phrase sasa hivi ‘right now, just now’, which is widely rendered as saa hii in all registers of both Sheng talk and KS.