ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the region down to Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania as three countries within the East Africa community (EAC). A major sociolinguistic feature observes in the East Africa region is that all the countries have a relatively similar sociolinguistic situation with the common denominator being that they are all multilingual. The main theme of this chapter has been on issues related to multilingualism in East Africa. In East Africa, most indigenous languages, for example Luhyia, Maasai and Kalenjin, have dialects which are equivalent to what Kloss referred to as 'abstand languages'. In Western countries, national and standard languages are closely related. The controversial issue of the number of languages present in East Africa is persistent. Smakman states that 'dialects and standard languages are opposites' from a sociolinguistic point of view. All the issues deliberated upon converge under the umbrella of multilingualism, which is a second nature to linguistic discussions involving the African continent.
