MCHANGO WA JAMII YA WAESHA KATIKA KUENDELEZA LUGHA NA FASIHI YA KISWAHILI

Abstract

The Asian people arrived in Africa more than one hundred years ago from Pakistan and India. Many of them are the children of the generations that entered Kenya at the beginning of the twentieth century. They came in as merchants from Gujarati, railway workers from Punjabi and clerks from Goa. When they arrived in Kenya, they found very few Africans who understood English. So they had to use Kiswahili, a language which by then had become largely a means of communication with Africans, who were mostly domestic servants and workers in their stores. Due to this interaction, this community has contributed significantly to the language repertoire of Kenya at various levels including sociolinguistic language and literature. The aim of this article is to highlight the contribution of the Asian community in the field of sociolinguists, language and literature to the Kenyan community and East Africa at large.