No idea what has got into me but I am in rant mode this week; I am blaming it on the Tia Maria shortage that has hit Lancaster. Anyway, yesterday I was harping on about ignorant black folk…today I am going to focus on Kenyans. I have no idea what it is about Kenyans but we have an obsession with accents.
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\n I have lived outside of Kenya since I was knee-high to grasshopper and for someone who was 5ft 9in by the age of 15 that is a loooong time ago. Every time I go back home there is at least one person who comments on the fact that I don’t tweng<\/b><\/i> i.e speak like a Jungu<\/i><\/b> (white person). Actually it is usually more than a mere comment; it is often a question and\/or exclamation:<\/p>\n

“Haiya, yaani Kui you’ve lived in Brito all this time and you’re not twenging for us?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Had it not been for my time in Belize I would still be wondering how on earth to deal with these comments.<\/p>\n

In Belize, most if not all Belizeans, when conversing amongst themselves, speak in Creole <\/a> however when they speak to non-Belizeans they speak English. The very nature of Creole means that you can not speak it with what Kenyan’s would call a Jungu tweng<\/b><\/i>. It just would not work. While Creole does have non-English words quite a few Creole words are actually English words and what makes those words cease to be English words is how they are pronounced. <\/p>\n

Belizeans, from what I saw, didn’t seem to be obsessed with who was ‘dropping’ their accents for whom, certainly they weren’t as obsessed as my fellow wananchi<\/b><\/i>( men\/women). They seem to have grasped what some of our people are yet to understand; that firstly, in order to communicate effectively, especially with people you are not too familiar with, you have to speak in a way that can be understood and secondly you have to feel comfortable with the way you choose to express yourself. <\/p>\n

The same logic should apply to our situation in Kenya. Most of us mix English, Kiswahili and sheng<\/b><\/i> (Kenyan Creole?) when we speak with fellow Kenyans. No matter how perfect our English is, the minute we are in a group with the rest of our people, words and phrases like akina nani<\/b><\/i> andati<\/b><\/i> automatically become part of the conversation. Some of us can utter these words while speaking English like the Queen but I challenge any Kenyan to try and say sindio, alaa, ehee<\/i><\/b> and woiye<\/b><\/i> with a Jungu tweng<\/b><\/i>. <\/p>\n

So finally I have a response to the “twenging<\/b> for us<\/i>” question.<\/p>\n

When I am in England, doing official work stuff, or speaking with my non-Kenyan friends, I do speak in what would be called a Jungu tweng<\/i><\/b>. When I am in Kenya or speaking with Kenyans I speak what in Kenya would be described as kawa<\/b><\/i> English. <\/p>\n

Personally, I would regard both as my normal accents. It has nothing to do with me being a wanna-be, or wanting to dumb down my English for Kenyans. It just has to do with being comfortable in how I choose to express myself and being aware of the people I am conversing with.<\/p>\n

Accents do not have a sell by date. Accents need not be static. <\/p>\n

It doesn’t matter if I spent 2 months in India and then returned to Kenya speaking like George W Bush; if that is how I want to express myself…so be it.<\/p>\n

I know that there is a deeper issue linked to our fixation with accents; the whole white is better belief that some Kenyans hold etc etc and I do intend to blog on this issue very soon but for now I just wanted it to be known that in most cases it just has to do with effective communication and feeling comfortable…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

No idea what has got into me but I am in rant mode this week; I am blaming it on the Tia Maria shortage that has hit Lancaster. Anyway, yesterday I was harping on about ignorant black folk…today I am going to focus on Kenyans. I have no idea what it is about Kenyans but […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1,6,8],"tags":[88,94],"class_list":{"0":"post-141","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-belize","7":"category-race","8":"category-watu-na-viatu","9":"tag-belize","10":"tag-race","11":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Y7Vr-2h","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/beginsathome.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/beginsathome.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/beginsathome.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beginsathome.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beginsathome.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=141"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/beginsathome.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/beginsathome.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=141"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beginsathome.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=141"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beginsathome.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=141"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}