This article examines how north-western Tanzanian Shisukuma speakers and Kiswahili speaker (a dominant eastern and central African lingua franca) consider age and gender in their greeting rituals. The key argument is that Shisukuma speakers have preserved their cognitive-lexical and cultural dimensions when speaking Kiswahili, as a primary language. This cultural resistance observes Lamy and Pool's allegation that cultural change is more tardy than linguistic shift.