British colonization in the region—largely in what is now Kenya and Zambia—created a complex relationship between English and the native languages of the countries where Settla is spoken.
Although there needs to be more research on the specifics, it can be concluded that the speakers of Settla do not disregard this system, but their patterns do most certainly differ from standard Swahili.
In Settla: Numeral adjectives and certain adverbial forms do not always show concordial agreement like in standard Swahili.
In Settla, in a form that perhaps mimics English, these affixes are absent and replaced by outside personal pronoun nouns, which only rarely occurs in standard Swahili.
In Settla, the 3pl affix is removed, forcing the definite time affix to attach to the verb directly, and the pronoun used is yeye (he / she), since wao (they) appears to be fairly absent in Settla: waotheywa-3PL-na-DEF.TIMEkaasitwao wa- -na- kaathey 3PL DEF.TIME sit'They are sitting'yeyethey (he/she)na-DEF.TIMEkaasityeye na- kaa{they (he/she)} DEF.TIME sit'They are sitting'As opposed to direct objects, indirect objects in standard Swahili are given precedence to be marked.
In Settla, the dative suffix is omitted, and the syntactic structure mimics English again, like in the example above.
Affixes marking an object that are featured in standard Swahili are also replaced by separate words in Settla.
'As noted above, Settla generally lacks verb constructions that in standard Swahili require a complement affix.
However the one large exception occurs where standard Swahili would use a subjunctive, the Settla form of the verb would take on the infinitive prefix ku- (to in English).