‘Shembeteng’ is a linguistic aberration, bin it

There is a new ‘language’ in town and it is awful; it is grating to the ear.

‘Shembeteng’ — what a mouthful — is the latest fad and people are all over, tripping over their tongues in a sad attempt to be seen to have it.

This being a campaign season, even politicians are competing to use this travesty of a language in a vain attempt to curry favour with the ‘inventors’ of ‘Shembeteng’; the youth. But you know how our politicians are; they will embrace anything for the sake of votes, only to discard it, like bad rubbish, once they are in office.

And this is a fitting metaphor for ‘Shembeteng’, it is a passing fad that will soon be forgotten, together with its creators, once something new appears on the scene.

Before I knew it even had a name, I came across a video on social media that soon went viral; some young men conversing in what was touted to be the newest language in town.

Of course, when I first listened to the video I grasped nothing. I got the impression that the young men were mouthing off some banalities. It was painful to watch and listen to.

The young men looked sad and desperate and that is when I knew this thing was going nowhere fast.

Shortly after, I made a post on Facebook expressing my horror and dismay at the assault on the beautiful language of Sheng. The few comments on my post gave me a clue on what ‘Shembeteng’ is all about. Apparently, ‘Shembeteng’ has ‘rules’ of grammar. For every word used, one has to affix the syllables 'mb_t_' towards the end. The blanks have to be filled with the vowel that precedes the 'm'.

For example, the world love comes out as lombotove. How uncreative and predictable.

Therein in lies the Achilles heel of ‘Shembeteng’.

The creators of ‘Shembeteng’ felt that they were bringing forth something that would, at best, rival Sheng and at worst, replace it. Well, I have news for them, theirs is a misguided attempt.

The moment I cracked the ‘Shembeteng’ code, I got instantly disappointed and bored. There was no more mystery and thus it was not worth pursuing.

The beauty of Sheng, on the other hand, lies in its mystery; like a virus – in a good way – it keeps on shifting and mutating. You can't pin Sheng down.

Sheng is that thing you want so bad, you do anything to get it. The moment you ‘get it’, it leaves you flattered and breathless; yearning for more. You, however, can't get too comfortable with Sheng, for, no sooner do you think you have it than it acquires new form and slips away. Even as you watch Sheng fade away, it somehow leaves you fulfilled and with fond memories; you wish it well as it moves on to future users, just like a doting grandparent will watch their grandchildren make their triumphant steps in life; knowing that they will turn out well.

Sheng is a spirit that is at once aspirational and difficult to pin down.

Sheng is as old as independent Kenya and it gets better with age. It is firmly entrenched in Kenyan cultural psyche. There is no way this mongrel called ‘Shembeteng’ can pose a threat to Sheng. Never.

When Sheng happened on the scene, Kiswahili and English scholars were all over the place, calling for its ‘ban’, arguing ignorantly that it was to blame for the poor performance of those two languages.

They soon realised how futile their mission was. How could a language, picked up in the streets, pose a threat to languages that are taught up to PhD level? Weren’t they, in effect, attesting to the superiority of Sheng?

When they could not beat Sheng down, the scholars retreated to their ivory towers to attempt to ‘study’ it. By the time a Masters or PhD thesis was halfway done, Sheng had reinvented itself and moved on, laying waste to their efforts.

In the early days of Sheng, the snotty middle and upper classes held up their noses and dismissed it as uncultured and ghetto language; until it showed up in boardrooms and so-called C-suites.

Such was the charm offensive that they got converted and were quick to adopt it as the new language of commerce and advertising. Today, if you want your advert to be effective, it has to be in Sheng.

Lately, I have noticed an interesting trend with Taifa Leo, the Kiswahili sanifu paper owned by Nation Media Group; their catchiest headlines are spiced up in Sheng.

Such cheeky headlines have proved to be very popular with readers and they tend to get shared a lot on social media, thereby giving the paper a new lease of life

The genie and genius of Sheng keeps on giving.

Our neighbours to the West, Ugandans, have a traumatic relationship with Kiswahili language, seeing as it was the language employed by dictator Idi Amin and his soldiers, who brutalised them in the 1970s and 1980s. Ugandans wanted nothing to do with Kiswahili.

However, when Kenyan students flocked into Ugandan universities – before Teams Uni came into existence – at the dawn of the millennium, they seduced their hosts with Sheng and Ugandans got attracted and started incorporating it in their daily usage

That is the seductive and soothing power of Sheng.

Tanzanians with their uptight Kiswahili sanifu are today known to incorporate Sheng in their captivating Bongo rhymes.

Nigerians stuck with their pidgin, today BBC has a dedicated news outlet that broadcasts and publishes in that pidgin.

Despite Nigeria being a major oil producing nation, today, their pidgin is their main cultural export, traded through their movies (Nollywood) and music.

As for Kenyans, we already have Sheng as the platform, we only have to work on our movies and music – never mind Eric Omondi – and we shall have arrived. We should therefore not be distracted by the aberration called ‘Shembeteng’. Long live sheng.

[email protected]