OSO. Tijdschrift voor Surinaamse Taalkunde, Letterkunde en Geschiedenis. Jaargang 3

[p. 91]

Cameroon pidgin English: its use in education, both traditional and formal
Loreto Todd

Jan Voorhoeve was interested in Cameroon because the country's multilingualism allowed almost infinite scope to his twin talents as Africanist and Creolist. His sudden death in January 1983 has been felt by scholars around the world, including those with Cameroon contacts. The following article is a tribute of one of these to a gentle and humane man.

Background to Cameroon Pidgin English

Cameroon is among the most multilingual countries on earth. For a population of approximately eight million it has around two hundred vernacular languages and two official languages, French and English. In addition, and as a direct result of its multilingualism, Cameroon also utilises a number of languages of wider communication, Bulu, Douala, Ewondo, Mungaka and, most widely used of all especially in urban communities, Cameroon Pidgin English (henceforth CP).¹

Exploration of West Africa began in the fifteenth century and by 1472 the Cameroon coastline and the island of Fernando Po had been mapped by the Portuguese navigator, Fernão do Poo. As luck would have it, the 1472 exploration of Cameroon coincided with a migration of shrimps and so the Portuguese called the river that reached the sea near Douala, Rio dos Camarōes, the river of shrimps. The name ‘Camarones’ was at first applied only to the river and the bay into which it flowed but gradually it became attached to the coastal settlements, extended to the entire country and modified in spelling - Kamerun, Cameroun, Cameroons - by successive European powers.

The Portuguese did not settle in Cameroon and although Dutch, German, Swedish, French and English merchants are all known to have traded in the vicinity of Douala, it was not until 1843 that a permanent European settlement was established on the Cameroon mainland. In this year, Pastor Joseph Merrick, a Jamaican, set up a mission station near Douala. Because of the ill-health of the missionaries, the station was closed down in 1849, but nine years later, in 1858, Alfred Saker, another Baptist minister established a mission in Victoria, recently renamed Limbe.

By the beginning of the 1880s the British were acknowledged as the dominant European power in the country. The local chiefs frequently appealed to the British to annex Cameroon formally² but the British were not anxious to increase their overseas possessions so they delayed formalising the relationship. By 1884, however, they had decided to annex Cameroon but the Germans had similar ideas. When Consul Edward Hyde Hewett arrived in Douala

1 It is extremely hard to be specific about the number of languages in the country because adequate research has not yet been carried out and it not always easy to distinguish between a related language and a related dialect. If varieties as different as German and Dutch would be regarded as distinct languages, then there may be over 600 such languages in Cameroon.

2 Several letters were sent like the following from the Douala chiefs to Queen Victoria in 1879:
Dearest Madam,
We your servants have join together and thoughts it better to write you a nice loving letter which will tell you all about our wishes. We wish to have your laws in our towns. We wish to have every fashioned altered, also we will do according to your consul's word. Plenty wars here in our country. Plenty murder and idol worshippers. Perhaps these lines of our writing will look to you as an idle tale.
We have spoken to the English consul plenty times about an English government here. We never have answer from you, so we wish to write you ourselves.

[p. 92]

he found that Nachtigal had forestalled him and declared ‘Kamerun’ part of the German Empire on July 14, 1884.

Germany held on to Cameroon until 1916 when France and Britain drove them out and divided the country between them. This partition was ratified by the Peace Treaty of 1919 and remained in force until independence. Francophone ‘Cameroun’ became independent in 1960. A year later a plebiscite was held in the anglophone zones so that the inhabitants could decide whether to unite with Nigeria or Cameroun. The ‘Southern Cameroons’ (shaded area in map) voted for unification with their francophone neighbours and in October 1961 the Federal Republic of Cameroon came into being. Eleven years later, in 1972, a referendum was held which resulted in the country switching from a federal system of government and becoming the United Republic of Cameroon.

No-one can be absolutely certain when CP came into existence. As early as 1563, the Englishman John Hawkins sailed to West Africa and collected a cargo of Africans whom he sold as slaves in the Americas. From the sixteenth century onwards, English was increasingly used as a trade language in West African ports and by the end of the eighteenth century Labarthe³ claimed that English-speaking sailors had a commercial advantage because English was understood in all coastal areas. We do know, however, that a variety of English was sufficiently well known in the vicinity of Douala for an Efik chief to keep a diary in it⁴; that merchants from Bristol and Liverpool had established trading posts in the Douala estuary by the middle of the nineteenth century and that by 1884 CP was so well established that the Germans were forced to use it on their coastal plantations and also in the Grasslands of Bamenda.

3 Labarthe, P., 1803: Voyage à la Côte du Guinée. Paris, Debray, p. 70.

4 The diary of Antera Duke was kept in a variety of English from 1785-88. It can be found in Forde, C. Daryll, 1956: Efik Traders of Old Calabar. London, international African Institute.

Variation within CP

It seems likely that a pidginised variety of English was used on the Cameroon coast from the late sixteenth or early seventeenth centuries. This pidgin was almost certainly strengthened, modified and expanded by the influx of Baptist missionaries in the nineteenth century. Among these missionaries were eighteen Krio speakers from Sierra Leone, four Krio speakers from Fernando Po and six speakers of Jamaican English. These figures become more significant when we realise that creole speakers formed approximately 36% of the expatriate Baptist missionaries in Cameroon between 1845 and 1887.

Catholic missionaries began evangelising Cameroon in 1890. The early priests were German speakers and they were principally interested in the spiritual welfare of Cameroonians on the large coastal plantations. They found that CP was the most useful language for religious instruction. Later, when the Catholic missionaries moved inland they continued to use CP as the most viable lingua franca in such a multilingual country. After World War 1, French Catholic missionaries gradually replaced CP by French for the purposes of instruction in the francophone zone, but the missionaries in the anglophone zone, many of whom were Dutch, preferred to use CP.⁵

Today, in spite of the fact that it has no official recognition in the constitution CP is the most widely used lingua france in the country being used as a link language between anglophone and francophone, educated and non-educated, young and old, and being regarded by most Cameroonians as a language of intimacy, humour and vitality.

CP remains, for the most part, a spoken language and like all spoken languages it shows variation in terms of region, user and use. Below I illustrate five varieties of CP but wish to stress that all varieties of CP are easily inter-intelligible. Its value as a link language militates against the development of very divergent sub-varieties.⁶

5 Personal communication trom Father Kerkvliet, a Dutch priest who translated a number of religious texts into CP.

6 There is one variety of CP called ‘Makro’ which is deliberately used to prevent understanding. It involves backslang, reductions and a high percentage of words from the Douala language. It has not been discussed here because it is, like a number of languages favoured by people wishing to avoid contact with the law, a macaronic language which changes frequently.

[p. 93]

United Republic of Cameroon

[p. 94]

Sample 1 - Coastal CP. Our sample is taken from a weekly column King Fo Toly (Story-Teller Par Excellence) which appears in Le Courrier Sportif. The column which uses a French-influenced orthography often highlights social problems.

Sista, dis tam mared fo solja swit pass mack! Tou woman weh dem Friend, nowadays to be married to a soldier is wonderful! Two women
sabiam long tam, dem mitam fo market:
who knew each other for a long time, met in the market:
Wéè... sista. Wussai you bin go? No wakka kouik kouik so. Oui get Hey... my friend. Where have you been? Don't walk so quickly. We
fo tok.
must talk.

Sample 2 - Coastal CP from Limbe. Our sample is taken from a conversation.

Dat man no dei na h ɔ s. S ɔ mtaim i go dei agen. S ɔ mtaim i no go That man is not in the house. Perhaps he'll be back again. Perhaps
dei agen. I kin d ɔng go na Bamenda.
he won't. It's possible he's gone to Bamenda.

Sample 3 - Liturgical (Bible Society). Our sample is from the Gospel of St. Mark.

Dis fos tok fo di gud nyus fo Jesus Christ God yi pikin. I bi sem as This is the beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ son of God. It is
i di tok fo di buk fo Isaiah, God yi nchinda.
the same as is spoken in the book of the prophet Isaiah.

Sample 4 - Liturgical (Catholic).

I believe for God - the Father whe he get all strong, whe he been make I believe in God, the father almighty, creator of
heaven and ground. And for Jesus Christ his only son, we Master, whe heaven and earth. And in Jesus Christ his only son, our lord, who
he been conceive by the Holy Ghost, and born for the Virgin Maria. was conceived by the Holy Ghost and born of the virgin Mary.

Sample 5 - Grafi CP. We provide a small extract from a story recorded in Bamenda.

Sɔm dei bin dei, trɔki bin go waka fain palava. I wan fait bɔt f sabi On a certain day, Tortoise went out looking for trouble. He wanted to fight
sei i han shɔt. I mitɔp sɔm hamahama εlεfan. I tɔk sei: ‘εl̅fan, a wan but he knew his arms were short. He met an enormous elephant. He fait yu.’
said: ‘Elephant, I want to fight you.’

Standardising Influences

Our samples of CP illustrate the variation that can occur in the language (and in particular in the written language) but the mobility of its users and its increasing use on the radio have a standardising effect on spoken CP. The majority of speakers share the following phonology with eleven vowels and twenty-two consonants:

[p. 95]

Monophthongs

Diphthongs

	Bilabial	Labio-Dental	Dental
Plosive	p b		t d
Nasal	m		n
Affricate
Lateral			l r
Fricative		f v	s
Semi-Vowels	w

	Palato-Alveolar	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Plosive			k g
Nasal		ɲ	η
Affricate	tʃ dʒ
Lateral
Fricative	ʃ ʒ			h
Semi-Vowels		j

CP's Consonant Phonemes

The core vocabulary is predominantly English with approximately 84% deriving from English (although many of these items may have been reinforced by German and Dutch); just over 1% derive from Portuguese but these words: palava, pikin and savi are among the most frequently-used in CP; 5% come from local Cameroon languages; and 10% from African and Caribbean sources and almost certainly taken to Cameroon by the Krios and the West Indians. As education increases, more and more English and French words are being adopted into CP but the phonology and the syntax remain relatively constant. If CP changed too quickly or too extensively it would cease to be the country's most viable lingua franca.

Traditional Education: CP's Role

In traditional Cameroon society, children were educated by their parents and elders. They were taught by means of stories, proverbs, riddles and songs the history, traditions, wisdom and culture of their people. This type of traditional education continues and increasingly, especially in urban communities and in families where the parents do not share a mother tongue, the medium for much of this education is CP. Children are taught by means of such stories as the following that wisdom belongs to everyone:

[p. 96]

Trɔki Gɛt Sɛns Tortoise Finds Wisdom

 

Sɔm dei bin dei, trɔki bin disaid sei sɛns pas mɔni so i bin bigin

 

Once, Tortoise decided that wisdom was better than wealth so he began

 

 

 

fɔ gada sɛns. I tek smɔl sɛns fɔ ɔni man wei i

 

to gather wisdom. He took the little bits of wisdom from everyone he

 

 

 

mitam. I swipam fɔ graum. I kasham hawe i di fɔl fɔ skai.

 

met. He swept it up off the ground. He caught it as it fell from the sky.

 

 

 

I tek ɔl dis sɛns putam fɔ sɔm big pɔt. I pɔt dɔn fulɔp fɔ sɛns.

 

He took all this wisdom and put it in a big pot. His pot was full of wisdom.

 

 

 

Trɔki tink sei ɔl di sɛns fɔ di graun dei fɔ i pɔt. I tink

 

Tortoise thought all the wisdom in the world was in his pot. He thought

 

 

 

sei i go kip dat sɛns fɔ i sɛf bɔt i fia sei sɔm man go tif

 

he would keep that wisdom for himself but he feared someone would steal

 

 

 

i pɔt. I wanda sei: ‘Usai a go haid dis ma pɔt?’ I nak i hɛd, i nak i hɛd,

 

his pot. He wondered: ‘where will I hide my pot?’ He puzzled it over and

 

 

 

i nak i hɛd sotei. Dɛn i tɔk sei: ‘Ẽ hẽ, na i! A go klaim stik

 

over and over again. Then he said: “Aha, that's it! I'll climb a tree and

 

 

 

haid ma pɔt fɔ dei.” So trɔki tek i pɔt fɔ han. I wan bigin klaim stik. I tek

 

hide my pot there.’ So Tortoise picked up his pot. He wanted to climb. He took

 

 

 

di pɔt fɔ wuman han bɔt i no fit klaim. I tek di pɔt fɔ man

 

the pot in his left hand but he couldn't climb. He took the pot in his right

 

 

 

han bɔt i no fit klaim. Taim wei trɔki bin wan klaim i smɔl pikin

 

but he couldn't climb. When Tortoise had been trying to climb his little child

 

 

 

bin luk i. I tɔk fɔ i papa sei: ‘Papa, fɔseka weti yu no tai pɔt

 

had been watching. He said to his father: “Papa, why don't you tie the pot

 

 

 

fɔ yu bak, dɛn yu go fit klaim stik?” Trɔki laf fɔ

 

on your back, then you'll be able to climb the tree?’ Tortoise laughed at

 

 

 

i pikin. I tɔk sei: ‘We! pikin, yu tink sei yu gɛt sɛns pas yu papa?’

 

his child. He said: ‘Why, child, you think you are wiser than your papa?’

 

 

 

Bɔt i put di pɔt fɔ i bak. Wandaful! I fit klaim dat stik wantaim.

 

But he put the pot on his back. Amazing! He could climb the tree at once.

 

 

 

Trɔki shidɔng fɔ stik. I hol dat pɔt fɔ han. I tɔk sei: ‘Mi, a tink sei a bin gada

 

Tortoise sat in the tree. He held that pot. He said: ‘I thought I had collected

 

 

 

Ɔl di sɛns fɔ graun fɔ dis ma pɔt, bɔt dat smɔl pikin gɔt sɔm sɛns

 

all the wisdom in the world for my pot, but that little child had some wisdom

 

 

 

wei mi a no gɛtam.’ So trɔki tek i pɔt, troweyam fɔ graun. Ɔl di

 

which I did not possess.’ So Tortoise threw the pot to the ground. All the

 

 

 

sɛns skata ɔlɔl. Na so graun dei.

 

wisdom scattered everywhere. That's how the world is.

They are taught traditional values by means of such proverbs as:

Dɔg i las na Gɔd di klinam - God helps those who cannot help themselves.

(lit. The dog's backside it is God who cleans it.)

Du gud tɔn bad - Good is often returned with evil. (lit. Do good turn bad.)

[p. 97]

 

ɛni alata na king fɔ i on hol - Every man is king in his own home. (lit.
Every rat is king in its own hole.)

 

Gɔd i kɔt, no apil - God's decisions are irrevocable. (lit. God's court,
no appeal.)

 

Hɔri hɔri brok trɔsa - More haste less speed. (lit. Hurry hurry break
trousers.)

 

I gud mek pikin dai fɔ i mama i han - If misfortune is going to strike, let
it strike the right person. (lit. It is good to make a child die in its mother's
arms.)

 

Man wei i bɔn i biabia na i go fɔs hia di smɛl - You will be the first to suffer
from your own rash actions. (lit. A man who sets fire to his beard
will be the first to notice the smell).

 

Mimbo kash alata plenti sɛf i no di slip fɔ pusi i bɛd - No matter how drunk
a mouse is he doesn't go to sleep in a cat's bed. (lit. Alcohol catch
mouse plenty even he does not sleep in a cat's bed.)

 

Pua man laik fɔ mek palava fɔ seka i no gɛt nɔting fɔ lɔs - Revolutions
start among the poor. (lit. Poor men like to make trouble because they
have nothing to lose.)

 

Wan han no fit tai bɔndul - We must co-operate to succeed. (lit. One
hand cannot tie a bundle.)

By means of riddles they are taught that things are not always what they seem, that wisdom means looking beneath the surface to find underlying causes and effects. Children love riddles and, especially on wet days, one hears them posing riddles such as the following to their friends:

Fut dei bɔt a no fit waka - Chia. (I have feet but I can't walk - Chair).
Fut no dei; maut no dei bɔt chɔp dei plenti fɔ ma bele - Kokonat. (I have
no feet; I have no mouth but there's a lot of food in my stomach -
Coconut).
Man wei i gɛt lɔng lɔng fut - Ren. (A man with very long legs - Rain).
Pipul wei dɛm di soso dans wɛn dɛm no hia drɔm - Ans. People who are always
dancing even when they can't hear a drum - Ants).
Plenti bed fɔ wan stik - Plenti man pikin wei dɛm di fɔlɔwan fain wuman
pikin. (Plenty birds on the one tree - Lots of boys chasing one beautiful
girl).
Rop wei i nɛva finish - Wata. (A rope that never ends - Water).
Soja fɔ wesan na wɛti? - Frɔg. (A soldier in wet sand is what? - A frog).
Wan man wei i no fit shidong rɛs smɔl fɔ ston - Wata. (One man who cannot
sit down and rest on a stone - Water).
Wɛti bi smɔl smɔl waitman fɔ graun? - Kata. (What is a little European on
the ground? - Phlegm).
Wuman wei i gɛt plenti pikin fɔ i bak - Kɔn. (A woman with lots of children
on her back).

The folk culture embodied in CP's stories, songs and linguistic traditions prepare children to participate fully in their society, helping them to store and interpret the wisdom of their people.

[p. 98]

Formal Education: CP's Role

CP is a valued and valuable Cameroon language. It is prized by its users because of its usefulness and flexibility. It is undoubtedly capable of being used in formal education and has already been adopted by many for the transmission of traditional wisdom. Where formal education is concerned, however, the majority of Cameroonians are adamant: it has no place in the classroom. Both anglophones and francophones are united in their belief that formal education should involve the acquisition of Standard English and Standard French. If other languages are to be introduced into the school system, then they should be widely-used African languages taught in their most standard form. It is as if Cameroonians have decided that CP has its functions - very valuable functions - in permitting spoken intergroup interaction but for them the education of their children is not to be put in jeopardy by liberal experiments. Standard English has already proved its efficiency in the classroom. CP has not. It still does not have an official orthography or local or international status. As one Cameroonian parent put it to me: ‘There is nothing wrong with dancing but we don't expect our children to dance on the desks. CP is like our mother tongues. It has its place and that place is not in the classroom. If English is the most useful language in the world, we want our children to learn the form that other speakers will understand. If there is something to be gained from knowing a world language and knowing it well, we want our children to get their share.’

Conclusion

It is still possible to find a few Cameroonians who regard CP as being beneath contempt, as being ‘linguistic dirt’⁷. Most, however, enjoy using it and delight in hearing it used as well. Its main role in the country is to provide understanding where previously none existed and it fulfils this role better than any other language, African or European. Parents know their children use it; they know teachers understand and often use it. They approve of the situation but they regard CP as a language for looking in on themselves and Standard English as a language for looking out on the world.

7 Quoted from article in Cameroon Tribune, May 1982.

[p. 99]

References

Ardener, S.G., 1968: Eye-Witnesses to the Annexation of Cameroon. Buea, Government Printer.

Aubry, P., n.d.: Pidjin: Petite Grammaire et Vocabulaire. Yaounde, Imprimerie St. Paul.

Debel, Anne, 1977: Cameroon Today. Tours, Editions J.A.

Gwei, Solomon, 1966: History of the British Baptist Mission in Cameroon with Beginnings in Fernando Po. B.D. thesis, Baptist Theological College, Zurich.

Le Vine, G., 1964: Cameroon: Mandate to Independence. Berkeley, University of California Press.

Kerkvliet, A., n.d.: The Sunday Gospels and Epistles with Short Explanations in Pidgin English. Buea, Catholic Mission Press.

Mveng, E., 1963: Histoire du Cameroun. Paris, Présence Africaine.

Schneider, G.D., 1969: West African Pidgin English. Athens, Ohio, G.D. Schneider.

Todd, Loreto, 1979: Some Day Been Dey: West African Pidgin Folktales. London, Routledge and Kegan Paul.

Todd, Loreto, 1984: Modern Englishes: Pidgins and Creoles. London, André Deutsch.