ABSTRACT
Lugha ya Mitaani (LyM) is a Tanzanian Swahili-based urban contact dialect, used predominantly by (male) youth. Its centre and hub is Dar es Salaam, an Indian Ocean port city and metropolis. Swahili, the matrix language of LyM, has itself emerged as a contact language and is today a modern standardised national language in Tanzania. LyM is a cover term for a spectrum of informal urban (youth) practices of speaking Swahili, ranging from register to sociolect. The use of LyM is part of the negotiation of two opposing relational qualities: status with its consideration of distance and respect on the one hand, and belonging, which invokes proximity and solidarity, on the other. Grammatically, LyM does not deviate much from Standard Swahili, except with regard to noun classes. The focus of linguistic creativity is on lexical and semantic manipulation achieved through dysphemism, hyperbole, onomastic synecdoche, metaphor and euphemism, often expressing a humorous perspective on events and situations. LyM has been boosted by private mass media since they were allowed in the early 1990s, and by Bongo Flava, a popular music culture that emerged through the appropriation of American hip-hop. Conversely, recent commercial pop music privileging English is having an opposite effect. Further research is needed in order to obtain data on the actual use of LyM.
