What is “Sheng”?
Basically, “Sheng” is a new colloquial Swahili variation spoken mostly by young people in Nairobi. It is admixed with a concoction of Swahili, English and vernacular languages in Kenya. However, the grammar used is mostly as in Swahili. Only some words (nouns and verbs) have been adopted from other languages, and the noun class agreements are totally mixed up. But any Swahili speaker would understand most of what is being said. Thus it would be fair to say that colloquial Swahili spoken in Dar-es-Salaam on the one hand, and Sheng on the other, are inevitably drifting apart. If this trend goes on, some day, translators or interpreters might be needed: to translate Swahili into Swahili.
