This archive report was first published on 22 November 2019.
Philip Ochieng, a renowned journalist, once lamented in his 'Mark My Word' column that it took him 'long years of struggle' to get Kenyan journalists to use the words 'avail' and 'available' correctly.
However, despite his efforts, the mistake persists to this day. In a November 7, 2019 email to the public editor, reader Jeff Wachira pointed out that the word 'avail' does not mean 'make available', citing a story headlined 'Avail voter list, IEBC ordered' in the previous day's Daily Nation.
According to Ochieng, the verb 'avail' means to 'make use of', 'be of use', or 'benefit or advantage'. He praised a The Standard sub-editor who wrote a page one headline: 'Why State will make available HIV drugs for the healthy' on March 14, 2017, instead of the more common 'Why State will avail HIV drugs for the healthy.'
However, despite Ochieng's apparent success, journalists still use 'avail' as the verb form of 'available'. It's not clear whether this aberration is a result of a poor command of the language or is what we call 'Kenyan English', a language or expressions widely used by Kenyans that have acquired new meanings compared to Standard English.
Examples of Kenyan English expressions include 'bounce', 'tarmac', 'dowry', 'my names are', 'sort out (a person)', and 'severally'. The word 'severally' means 'separately or individually; each in turn' in Standard English, but many journalists and other Kenyans use it to mean 'many times', as in the example: 'Beatrice Chemaiyo succumbed to her injuries after being stabbed severally.'
Atichi Reginald, in his University of Nairobi 2004 master's thesis, 'The Semantic Distinctiveness of Kenyan English', says some of the Kenyan English expressions result from a word 'absorbing' senses of the meaning from another word that is close to it in form and meaning.
