The Kenyan Language Setting.

Despite considerable linguistic diversity in Kenya, the country is increasingly trilingual, with individual Kenyans tending toward varying degrees of proficiency in the vernacular, Swahili, and English. The vernacular is acquired at home and in the neighborhood with co-ethnics in both rural and urban contexts. Swahili is typically learned informally from other nonnative speakers who speak a wide range of varieties of it, but there is a trend toward more formal instruction in school. English is learned within the school system, with English proposed in official policy as the medium of instruction from the fourth year of the system upward. English is used as the standard language of government and business communication. In Africa as a whole there is a tendency among African writers to write in their own languages at the cost of reducing their potential audiences. This tendency will increase vernacular prestige and increase competition with Swahili and English. With increasing literacy in Kenya and heightened pan-African awareness, it is not unlikely that this movement will take a stronger hold there, resulting in enhanced vernacular literacy. (MSE)