Tomato, tomahto

For a number of years, I sang in a church choir in Washington DC. Our director, a brilliant musician and stickler for details, always said that sung English was a different language from the spoken version. He raged against hard “r”s, saying they sounded like growling. He didn’t think much of hard “t”s either, preferring something closer to a soft “d” instead. No vowel or consonant was safe from critique. Spirit of Life, something of a Unitarian theme song sung every week in our congregation, was contorted to “speeee reed ahf laaif. ”

He was right, of course. All that extra stretching of our mouths and focus on detail really made a difference. As odd as it felt coming out, it did make the words far more comprehensible to those in the audience.

Living in Kenya, I find myself once again stretching my mouth to form sounds in unfamiliar ways. Though English is one of the two official languages of Kenya, it doesn’t guarantee mutual comprehension among English speakers. Mine is a foreign version of English, of course. And the joke about being separated by a common language applies.

Over the months we’ve learned.

Asking for waah-der, as we Americans are tempted to do, is as likely to get you a blank stare as it is a bottle of water. Pronouncing it whaaa-teh takes more oral effort and dexterity, but is more likely to be understood.

Understanding what people say can be a challenge, too. For one thing, there’s not one English accent in Kenya, but many.  There are British influences, sing-songy Asian ones, and myriad styles and inflections reflecting the dozens of different tribal languages spoken in Kenya. There’s the English from different Anglophone countries, and the versions brought in by all the expats for whom it’s not a first language.

So, here are a few examples of common Kenyan English-isms:

There’s the omnipresent “kindly,” which is the Kenyan English equivalent of “please” – as in “kindly bring me some whaa-teh.”

Every time I back the car out of the drive, the guard says, “Oh, you are moving out,” as if I was packed and leaving for good.

Ask for the price of something and it will invariable cost “only [insert amount].”

Likewise, distances may be “not so very far.”

A term of respect for a woman is to call her “Mama.”  

The word “shenanigans” is more current than quaint, as in “no more shenanigans.”

Say “hello” to someone and the response is likely to be “fine, fine,” because the question, “how are you” is implied.  

This tendency to repeat words comes up in other instances, too, such as “sorry, sorry,” “slowly, slowly,” and “sawa, sawa” (which means, “okay” in Kiswahili).

These English-isms are part of the charm of living abroad and discovering the many was in which language evolves. Speaking English in Kenya, I realize how much of my own language is colored with metaphors and expressions that reflect not only my American heritage, but also the places I’ve lived, schools I’ve attended, and people I’ve worked with. And like many other English-speaking expats, I find my accent converging towards a common middle, where accents are dulled and enunciation is emphasized.

To really find a lingua franca, I should study Kiswahili, the other official language of Kenya, widely used here, in Tanzania, and to a lesser extent in Uganda. For now, I just know a few choice words or phrases.

In the meantime, I continue to contort my mouth in the hope of turning my English into something comprehensible. The choir director would be pleased.