East African English

Introduction

The OED’s coverage of East African English includes the varieties of English spoken in Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda, three countries which share a common Anglophone background despite their differing colonial histories.

The forms of English spoken in modern East Africa are […] complex to describe, heavily influenced by a speaker’s formal education and their occupation (impacting the necessity they have for speaking English). Some speakers will be native English speakers, though fewer than in Southern or West Africa, while most will speak it as a second language.

Sociolinguistically, the East African nations differ as to the status of Kiswahili and the changes in the official status of English since independence in the 1960s. It is also difficult to establish knowledge and use of English across the region in the absence of reliable data. Attitudinally, it is only in pronunciation that there is widespread acceptance of deviation from British English, with acceptance of Standard English syntax and grammar spoken with African accents. Yet African forms differ from the British ‘standard’ for a variety of reasons, including interference from the local native language, general language learning strategies, and written English exposure.

Excerpt taken from Pronunciation model: East African English

East African English words recently recorded in the OED

• asante sana, int. and n.
• collabo, v.
• come-we-stay, adj.
• jembe, n.
• nyama choma, n.
• pressed, adj.¹
• sambaza, v.
• Sheng, n.³ and adj.
• tarmac, v.
• unprocedural, adj.

See the full list of East African English words most recently added to the OED here.

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