Southeast alumnus to study language in East Africa

Southeast Missouri State University graduate Philip Rudd will travel to Nairobi, Kenya, this month on a Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad grant.

"I knew that if I wanted to do the research I would need help in funding," Rudd said, because the research can't be done in America and he would need to stay in Kenya for some time.

The research Rudd wants to do is for his dissertation on a language spoken only in East Africa.

The language, called Sheng, is an urban vernacular in Nairobi. Rudd hopes to discover whether Sheng is a language with a grammar or just slang.

Sheng came about when people moved from rural areas to the city looking for work. Kenya has more than 40 spoken languages. When speakers of different languages come into contact, one way they communicate is by creating a new language, like Sheng, Rudd said.

Nothing has been written about or in Sheng yet, he said. Some people think Sheng is just the speaker switching between two languages and not a new language.

He first came into contact with Sheng in the 1980s when he was in the Peace Corps.

Now Sheng is stigmatized, but it could possibly become the future language of Kenya, he said.

Rudd, who grew up in Carter and Ripley counties, said he always thought of Missouri as a part of the Midwest, but every person he met in the Peace Corps from New England or California asked him what part of the South he was from.

"Arkansas is usually considered South, Missouri never seceded from the Union," he said.

It is nice to see that people even outside of the United States can be proud of their language and also feel insecure about it, he said.

Rudd competed against colleagues from Harvard and Stanford for the grant. He had to write a 10-page proposal, a budget justifying every expense and an explanation of the benefits of his research.

Rudd received his undergraduate degree from Southeast in the 1980s. He now teaches at Ball State University in Muncie, Ind.

ameyer@semissourian.com

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