In this chapter, we compare urban youth speech styles (UYSSs) in Nairobi, Kenya (Kiessling and Mous 2004), and in the western parts of the Netherlands as documented around the major cities of Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Den Haag and Utrecht (see Nortier and Dorleijn 2013 and references there). This chapter is a first attempt at a Northern European/African cross-continental comparison.
We definite UYSS as the linguistic practices of (mostly) young people in multilingual urban environments. There are large historical, socioeconomic and demographic differences between Kenyan and Dutch UYSSs, an the linguistic input in both environments differs greatly. Nevertheless, the conditions under which UYSSs emerge are comparable in at least two respects: (1) they are the creation of multilingual adolescents in urban environments, and (2) they emerge as a stylistic option, rather than out of communicative need (contrary to pidgins, for example).
Therefore, a comparison of the two UYSS situations in these widely differing parts of the world may contribute to our understanding of exactly how linguistic and extra-linguistic factors contribute to the linguistic characteristics of UYSSs.