Kiswahili Spicing Up Broadcasting

Nairobi Star (Nairobi)

Swaleh Mdoe

6 June 2011

opinion

It’s important to note that with its recognition as both the national and official language in the new constitution, Kiswahili has taken a big stride in our social and political lives in recent years.

We encounter Kiswahili words in our everyday interactions, on mass media – radio, television, newspapers etc. Tell me if there is any FM presenter, no matter how they are endowed with the English language, who does not spice up their presentations with Kiswahili, even if it is broken? Who would have dreamed of having Kiswahili-only radio stations in Kenya? But we have Q-FM, Milele FM, Radio Umoja, Radio Citizen, Radio Maisha and many others in Mombasa like Kaya FM, Radio Rahma and Pwani Fm among others. These radio stations were set up due to the growing number of Swahili speakers. Even local TV stations have taken the cue by producing English programmes that have Swahili names like Sebuleni on NTV, Waridi on Citizen.

And almost all the local TV programmes and commercials have taken up this trend in which characters use both languages but mainly influenced by Kiswahili and commodity advertising being spiced with Kiswahili phrases to entice customers.

For example, Bambika na Tusker, Lipua Mamilioni, Kwachu Mamilii, Zawadi 2929, Bonga, Sambaza, Okoa Jahazi, Skiza of Safaricom. Also Vuka, Jishtue, Nikuhama tu for the then Zain now Airtel, and almost every advert comes laced up in Kiswahili. Why? Because Kiswahili is the language of mass market for industrial and commercial commodities.

Publishers too have followed this trend and give their English-content magazines Kiswahili names, such as Sokoni, Twende, Tupike etc.

Statistics show that about 45 per cent of Kenyans speak Kiswahili, 33 per cent speak English and the rest speak their mother toungues or if you like, ethnic languages with about 150 million Swahili speakers worldwide.

This is to show that Kiswahili has the potential of “swallowing” all these other languages and become a lingua franca in Kenya like in neighbouring Tanzania, where 90 per cent of its population are Kiswahili speaking.

However, there is an issue with some of the television and radio presenters in the country who are taking the language so casual and pedestrian by misusing it in their presentations and therefore end up misleading viewers and listeners because they distort grammar.

For example, there is a big difference between dhamana and thamani, with the former meaning surety and the later means value. There is also a difference between adhiri and athiri, and while the former means humiliate, the later means affect.

Look at how broad Kiswahili has grown that since 1980, the United Nations educational, scientific and cultural organization (Unesco) has been using Kiswahili as one of its official languages.

The African Uunion uses it as its working languages and even the world’s institutions such as the largest ICT maker in the world, Microsoft, has created a link for Kiswahili users to fulfil the needs of the Swahili speakers and growing prominence of the language. Why should we be left behind?

The writer is a broadcast journalist in Nairobi.

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