Talk:Kenyan English

This article is or was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Jordancuva.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 23:39, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 24 January 2019 and 1 May 2019. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): KrystleW.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 23:39, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified 2 external links on Kenyan English. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:

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• Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20150217152629/http://www.kenyalaw.org:8181/exist/kenyalex/actview.xql?actid=Const2010 to http://www.kenyalaw.org:8181/exist/kenyalex/actview.xql?actid=Const2010

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Hey Guys!

I have an assignment for school to find possible relevant and reliable sources to benefit a wikipedia page that relates to my class. So here are a few souces I found that may have some good information in them!

Bibliography:

Brunner, Thomas. Simplicity and Typological Effects in the Emergence of New Englishes : The Noun Phrase in Singaporean and Kenyan English, De Gruyter,

   Inc., 2017. https://books.google.com/books/about/Simplicity_and_Typological_Effects_in_th.html?id=UHA3vgAACAAJ

Irungu, David M. Effects of Swahili Vowel System on Kenyan English Speakers' Pronunciation, The University of Mississippi, Ann Arbor, 2015, ProQuest,

   http://ezproxy.library.arizona.edu/login?url=https://search-proquest-com.ezproxy2.library.arizona.edu/docview/1733631832?accountid=8360.

Ragnarsson, I. H. (2011). East African English: Linguistic Features and Background. Retrieved from

    https://skemman.is/bitstream/1946/8310/1/BAEssay-EastAfricanEnglish-HIR-finalversion.pdf

The Mouton World Atlas of Variation in English, edited by Bernd Kortmann, and Kerstin Lunkenheimer, De Gruyter, Inc., 2013.

   https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Mouton_World_Atlas_of_Variation_in_E.html?id=Yze2pwAACAAJ  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jordancuva (talk • contribs) 22:26, 11 March 2018 (UTC)

Spelling is missing from this page. I came here to determine Kenyans' preference between is and iz spellings. While I assume the former, an international organization I'm working for uses both in a weird admixture —GRM (talk) 08:40, 20 November 2019 (UTC)

Summarize Timeline Top Qs Fact Check

@Pinchme123:

Hi! I will refer to Wikipedia:Templates_for_discussion/Log/2025_November_24#Template:Use_Kenyan_English, in regards to this edit.

That was not just a "a technical decision for backend stuff on Wiki". That fundamentally altered the ENGVAR labeling practices for the majority of Kenya-related pages (that is, having ENGVAR affinity only for Kenya, or where Kenyan varieties of English were chosen).

Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style#National_varieties_of_English reads "An article on a topic that has strong ties to a particular English-speaking nation should use the standard (formal, not colloquial) English of that nation." This means this page should be labeled with the relevant variety of English. It also reads: "For topics with strong ties to the Commonwealth of Nations, or multiple Commonwealth countries or other former British territories, use British spelling." (Canada, Australia, and New Zealand of course have their own conventions)

As Template:Use Kenyan English is no more, I must use Template:Use British English to represent the formal, standardized, written variety of English used in Kenya. We need to have the "British English" template back here. If you object to this, please gather evidence to have Template:Use Kenyan English restored, and until then, the British English tag should remain here. WhisperToMe (talk) 04:38, 14 December 2025 (UTC)

I must add, as these discussions touch upon, is that any difference in pronunciation/sounds between say the English used in formal media in Kenya and that of the UK are not relevant, as Wikipedia is primarily written, not spoken. Any usage of English in casual contexts is not relevant either, as Wikipedia is meant to be written in a formal, standardized, academic variety of English. I will also add that when Template:Use Singapore English was deleted, an automated program replaced instances of that with the British English template. WhisperToMe (talk) 04:42, 14 December 2025 (UTC)

You "must" not do anything. Wikipedians incorrectly decided to delete a dialect banner, despite an ACTUAL page describing the dialect. They chose to delete it, so be it, but no, British English does not apply here. It is better to not have a dialect banner than it is to use the entirely wrong one all because of a local consensus decision. --Pinchme123 (talk) 05:02, 14 December 2025 (UTC)

@Pinchme123: WP:ENGVAR states "For topics with strong ties to the Commonwealth of Nations, or multiple Commonwealth countries or other former British territories, use British spelling.", so according to ENGVAR this is not a wrong template but the correct one. Also, that deletion was not a "local" decision as it affected all pages with Kenyan English tags. These are global decisions. The deletion of the Template:Use Commonwealth English was global too (see Wikipedia:Templates_for_discussion/Log/2021_May_14#Template:Commonwealth_English_and_Template:Use_Commonwealth_English).

ENGVAR says that we must use the standardized, formal, written variety of English used in Kenya, and that needs to be signaled somehow. The deletions and the wording of ENGVAR force the usage of the British English tag to signal the standardized, formal, written variety of English used in Kenya.

If this is an incorrect decision to delete the template, gather the evidence that says that was an incorrect decision (evidence that the formal, standardized, written variety of English is sufficiently different from that of the United Kingdom) and please present the evidence so the deletion is overturned.

WhisperToMe (talk) 05:09, 14 December 2025 (UTC)

The decision was local not global as it was not announced to all of Wikipedia (and certainly no one thought to alert the actual page for the dialect itself to even attempt to find those with knowledge of the subject) and was only carried out as a TfD on an obscure technical page. The Kenyan English dialect has a bunch of distinct words and grammatical differences from British English (as mentioned by the few Wikipedians in the local decision with any knowledge of Kenyan English). And finally, plenty of other "former British territories" have their own English banners, including Canada, South Africa, Australia, USA, Hong Kong, Nigeria, etc. So no, these arguments are unpersuasive. --Pinchme123 (talk) 05:18, 14 December 2025 (UTC)

@Pinchme123: If the deletions were not properly announced, please as soon as possible review Wikipedia:Deletion review and appeal the relevant decisions, arguing that they were not properly announced and therefore were unfair deletions (would not notifying national communities count as one of the "substantial procedural errors"?). In the meantime, Template:British English is all I have. I agree with you that the relevant countries' WikiProjects/user groups should have been notified. I recall that I used "Kenyan English" in places, then that was deleted (and not replaced with BrEng, unlike Singapore English). That's why I then added BrEng, to make up for the loss of the old template and to cover that country's variety of English. Anyhow, until/unless such are reversed, Template:British English should still be used.

Remember, when gathering evidence of why Kenyan English should have its own template, that any features of Kenyan English used in colloquial uses (that is, those not showing up in formal, standardized, academic speech) don't factor into Wikipedia. I would look for academic articles that talk about specifically formal, standardized, written Kenyan English in academic/government/business use.

As for the banners of the other former UK territories, there are users who are trying to delete several of those other ones too, for your information. (Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, no, but the others, yes).

WhisperToMe (talk) 05:26, 14 December 2025 (UTC)

You don't "have" anything at all. This page is to be written using Kenyan English. Do not put the British English banner here without consensus. --Pinchme123 (talk) 07:18, 14 December 2025 (UTC)

@Pinchme123: Out of courtesy I notified both the ENGVAR talk page and the Africa WikiProject (the respective area WikiProject for Kenya) about this discussion so a fresh set of eyes can take a look. I pinged you on both of these posts. WhisperToMe (talk) 17:46, 14 December 2025 (UTC)

There's move to a broader discussion raised at Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style#Broader_discussion. I will post a link when it happens. WhisperToMe (talk) 18:23, 14 December 2025 (UTC)

@Pinchme123: Please see Wikipedia:Village_pump_(idea_lab)#c-Kowal2701-20251214202600-Use_British_English_templates WhisperToMe (talk) 20:28, 14 December 2025 (UTC)

Not seeking an argument, but I must comment for the record in response to the suggestion that there was something underhand about the decision to delete the Use Kenyan English templates (which, for any readers in future, is not the same as this article. Different thing entirely).

When a template is flagged for discussion at Templates for Discussion, a notice appears at the top of the page of every article that uses the template that warns that the template is being discussed for deletion. It includes a link to the discussion and to a help page about what templates are for, how they work etc. The notice remains there for the duration of the discussion, at least seven days, and anyone may give their view. As this article used the {{Use Kenyan English}} template, a notice did indeed appear right at the top of this page, as it did on the several hundred articles that used the template. A notice is also placed on the talk page of the user who created the template. It so happens that the template's creator also voted to delete it. So I would strongly push back against any suggestion that the discussion was not widely advertised. Dgp4004 (talk) 00:15, 15 December 2025 (UTC)

I won't doubt that a notice did automatically generate at the top of any page using the template. But that notice did not trigger any kind of alert to watchlists because it didn't create any kind of edit to the pages. Which means, for anyone watching pages using Kenyan English, they were not alerted to the change by any sort of notification, but instead would have had to chance by the notice by visiting such a page (this, after-all, isn't some kind of bypass). . So I dispute the characterization that people were notified about this discussion.

No one could even be bothered to give notice to the relevant WikiProjects of Africa (eta: or Kenya) until today, or Kenya at all (which I've just noticed still hasn't been notified; seems odd, given this discussion is literally about the dialect used in that country). (eta: I believe was wrong about this, my apologies)

--Pinchme123 (talk) 00:44, 15 December 2025 (UTC) ETA @ 01:19, 15 December 2025 (UTC)

I am sorry you didn't notice the hundreds of notices. As it happens, WikiProject Kenya itself was flagged as dead for several months over summer and nobody seemed to notice that either, so I doubt if it would have made very much difference to engagement.

However, as WhisperToMe said, if you feel policy was not followed, you may wish to submit a report to deletion review. Dgp4004 (talk) 01:14, 15 December 2025 (UTC)

I'm sorry the process for notifying editors doesn't actually notify them. But these bypasses have got to be built, don't they? --Pinchme123 (talk) 01:19, 15 December 2025 (UTC)