Top Gear Slang Game, the Kenyan Way

There’s a good reason for which the tongue was made without a bitsy bit of bone, a linguistic reason to be specific.

Well, for starters, if it had a bone, the tongue wouldn’t have been capable of creating the diverse array of languages we know today.

Yea, I don’t think it would have gone beyond the infant’s favorite goo-goo-ga-ga, which doesn’t even need a tongue to pronounce. Ha! Just try it.

Over the history of humanity, our boneless tongues have come up with 7139 languages that we know of. There could be more!

In other words, the tongue figured 7139 different ways to form words and meaning. Crazy little organ!

Little, boneless and powerful

The point of a tongue is to be flexible and slick, so it can twitch consonants and syllables into words at ease.

Indeed, (insert a medieval Briton accent) it’s a special little organ, single handedly dividing the human race into so many diverse lingual groups.

Being without a bone, there’s nothing to keep the tongue fixated, or rigid on one language.

The tongue is stubborn, always looking for new ways to evolve language.

Ever evolving

Language evolves like a cloud up in the sky; here in Kenya. There is almost no shape it can’t take.

A cloud will combine any crazy shapes the wind can blow and still have a meaning; sometimes fuzzy and blurry but recognizable.

One moment a cloud could take on the form of a giraffe with a tail as long as its neck, the other moment it becomes a catfish with braided whiskers and no tail fin. Ridiculous, ain’t it?

It’s the same with our lingual creativity. Our slang game is top gear. There’s never a dull moment.

At one time, it was ‘Ngumi mbwegze’ (a double fist bump) trending.

Then came Papa Fred’s signature nga’s including: ‘Ngamwaya’ (slang for I pour), ‘ngafanya bizness ledgit’ (I’ll do legit business), ‘kama ngaleta wine, ngaleta fine wine’ (If you serve wine, you gotta serve fine wine) and many more nga’s.

These are a concoction of Swahili and Congolese French.

Kenyans rock! I mean Swahili and French? It’s like marrying an elephant to a blue whale. Both are big wigs, but existing in different worlds. Yet Kenyans keep finding ways to make it all beautiful.

Now, just before we forgot about slang, Shembeteng hit. The game’s not over yet!

Our tongues refused to be bound by the Bantus, Nilotes and Cushites in us. We’re going to keep making more slang, cos slang is a beautiful thing.

Side note: Did you know that O.K was once slang? Yea it was Oll Korrrect, slang for all correct. Now you know!

Thank you for reading.