By Dibussi Tande
Culled from Dibussi Tande: Scribbles from the Den: Essays on Politics and Collective Memory in Cameroon. Langaa publishers. 232 pages. Available from African Books Collective, Oxford (£19.95), Michigan State University Press, Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble ($29.95).
Although Pidgin English is the most widely-spoken language in English-speaking Cameroon, and rivals French as the language of choice in some parts of French-speaking Cameroon (particularly in the Littoral and Western Provinces), it is still treated with scorn and disdain by the Elite who consider it a language for the illiterate masses.
Cameroon English: "Polluted" by Pidgin or French?
Click here for a printable/downloadable version of this article in PDF format
The origins of this disdain go back to the pre-colonial and colonial eras when Pidgin was the lingua franca used by Cameroonians to communicate with Europeans. Hence the descriptions of Pidgin as bad, bush, or broken English. “It is interesting that even today Cameroonians popularly associate Standard English, commonly known as 'grammar', with the elite; Pidgin English is perceived as the language of the common man, ” says Augustin Simo Bobda.
Today, critics of Pidgin English claim that it is polluting Cameroonian English, and preventing English-speaking Cameroonians from speaking Standard English correctly. According to a survey carried out by Jean-Paul Kouega on the attitude of educated Cameroonians towards Pidgin, “the respondents commented that the use of Pidgin by pupils interferes with their acquisition of English, the language that guarantees upward social mobility.”
English in Cameroon: Is Pidgin the Culprit?
Nowhere is the disdain for Pidgin more glaring than at the University of Buea, Cameroon’s lone English language university, where anti-Pidgin English signboards have been placed all over campus:
- Succeed at university by avoiding Pidgin on campus"
- Pidgin is like AIDS--Shun it"
- English is the Password, not Pidgin"
- Speak English and More English"
- Pidgin is taking a heavy toll on your English--Shun it"
- “Commonwealth Speak English not Pidgin”
- If you speak Pidgin you will write Pidgin
- l'Anglais un passeport pour le monde, le Pidgin, un ticket pour nulle part
(“English, a Passport to the World, Pidgin, a Ticket to Nowhere" – Yes, this one is in French....)
The perennial critics of Pidgin cannot even fathom that declining English standards in Cameroon may be due to ineffective language teaching methods in Primary and Secondary Schools. Neither does it even cross their minds that the dramatic encroachment of the French language into the English sphere has resulted in a new form of Cameroonian English, which is usually a word-for-word translation of French sentences – and which is regularly on display in the English section of Cameroon Tribune. Pidgin, they insist, is the sole culprit for declining English standards in Cameroon.
In a recent interview with Martin Jumbam, Prof. Abioseh Porter of Drexel University attributed attitudes towards Pidgin, particularly at the University of Buea, to intellectual snobbery:
“I find such notices senseless. In fact, the people who seemed to have understood the import of Pidgin as a language of mass communication are the missionaries. They quickly realized that language is a great cultural binder and they knew how to exploit it to reach the greater masses of the people. To me, this opposition to the use of Pidgin is nothing short of intellectual snobbery, period. You and I are now communicating in English, but if we were either in Cameroon or in Sierra Leone, Pidgin or Krio would be the most appropriate means of communication. But where you’re warning people against using the language they master best, that doesn’t make sense to me.”
The fate of Cameroon Pidgin English is similar to that of other “Creoles” around the world which also carry the stigma of illiteracy and “bushness’. For example, "Despite their rich cultural heritage,” says Morgan Dalphinis (Caribbean & African Languages. Karia Press, 1985), “Creoles have been devalued of prestige, in the same way that their speakers have been, for at least five hundred years."
Today, the attacks on Cameroonian Pidgin English stand out because of their ferociousness and the quasi-criminalization of Pidgin in certain quarters, as in the University of Buea where it is banned.
So, is Cameroon’s “Pidgin Problem” simply a pedagogic issue (even if it is a misplaced one), or is the “problem” fueled by broader societal conflicts about class, linguistic and communal identity, and political marginalization? In other words, are we dealing here with the Pedagogy of Pidgin or with the Politics of Pidgin in Cameroon?
Pidgin and the Politics of Identity and Power
In order to understand the position of Pidgin English in Cameroon, and the fury with which its critics go after it, one has to first contextualize the unequal relationship between Cameroon’s English-speaking minority (20% of the population) and the French-speaking majority, and also decipher the assimilationist tendencies that underlie that relationship. According to Lyombe Eko,
“In the 40 years since the reunification of English-speaking Southern Cameroons and French-speaking Republique du Cameroun, the resulting over-centralized government, run mostly by the French-speaking majority, and operating under what is essentially an Africanized version of the Napoleonic code, has attempted to eliminate the British-inspired educational, legal, agricultural, and administrative institutions which the Anglophones brought to the union. This has been accompanied by a concerted attempt to assimilate the English-speakers into the French-dominated system.”
A key aspect in this assimilationist policy has been a systematic attempt to devalue anything of Southern Cameroons origin, including its people. As Lyombe points out,
“To this day, when speaking of English-speaking Cameroonians, many French-speaking Cameroonians use the word "Anglo" as an epithet to mean "uncouth," "backward," "uncivilized," "inconsequential," and so on.”
This view of the backward “Anglo” extends to the English that they speak and its byproduct, Pidgin English. It is quite common for barely literate Francophone Cameroonians to insist that the majority of Anglophone Cameroonians are incapable of speaking standard English, and that even the most educated among them speak only “l’anglais de Bamenda” – by this they mean a dumbed-down and “Pidginized” English which is supposedly as barbaric as Pidgin itself. Of course, there is no truth to this claim, but it serves the purpose of transforming Cameroon English and Cameroon Pidgin English into symbols of Anglophone inferiority, and of Anglophone inability to fit into the mainstream.
So instead of Pidgin being seen as a symbol of Anglophone creativity and resilience, it has become a stigma and an anathema, which supposedly reinforces the perception that English-speaking Cameroonians are unable to excel even in their own English or Anglophone sphere.
The underlying message is a fairly simple one: In order to fit in, English-speaking Cameroonians must shun their inferior culture and language(s) which are obstacles to their integration into the national (read Francophone) mainstream, and gravitate towards French which is the language of access, success and power. Pidgin in particular is therefore portrayed as a language of confinement (in the “Anglophone Ghetto”), of exclusion (from “national mainstream”) and of inferiority (vis-à-vis the French language).
Buying into the Myth of Inferiority
It was Castells (1997) who noted that:
“If nationalism is, most often, a reaction against a threatened autonomous identity, then, in a world submitted to culture homogenization by the ideology of modernization and the power of global media, language, the direct expression of culture, becomes the trench of cultural resistance, the last bastion of self-control, the refuge of identifiable meaning (52).” [My emphasis.]
Cameroon’s Anglophone elite have failed to appreciate the role of Pidgin as a tool for identity formation and protection in the former British Southern Cameroons. Instead they see it as a threat which must be eradicated. The result, among other things, says Ngefac & Sala, is a steady “depidginization” of Cameroon Pidgin English:
“It is demonstrated that the feeling that Pidgin is an inferior language has caused Cameroon Pidgin speakers to opt for the “modernization” of the language using English language canons, instead of preserving the state of the language as it was in the yesteryears.”
This again is in line with the traditional relationship of domination and submission which Creole languages have had to deal with all over the world. As Dalphinis has pointed out in the case of Caribbean Creoles,
"Creole languages… have, therefore, traditionally been devalued by their own speakers who may point to these languages and at times their own African features and say that these are the cumulative reasons for their poverty and underdevelopment. They mistakenly equate cause with effect."
The persistent attack on Pidgin English in Cameroon cannot be taken at face value because it points to a more insidious phenomenon, i.e., the steady destruction (deliberate or inadvertent) of Anglophone culture and identity – something which Dr. Juliana Nfah-Abbenyi recognized so well in her keynote address at a conference organized by the University of Albany’s Consortium on Africa. According to a blog about the event,
“Pidgin English competes with English proper, French and the more than 200 native languages in polyglot Cameroon, and is being singled out at this Anglophone University as a special threat. Using Gloria Anzaldua, Homi Bhabha and other theorists as a framework, Dr. Abbenyi showed how these signs reveal "a deep anxiety and malaise" about linguistic and national identity in Cameroon. Pidgin, she said, drawing on her personal experience as a native speaker of this vernacular, is "the language of playfulness, informality, vulgarity, transgression, trade, celebration, and family." To ask students to "shun it" is to ask them to enter the English-speaking public sphere--which is already fraught in majority-Francophone Cameroon--and not look back.” [My emphasis.]
In an earlier article on my blog about the second class status of English in Cameroon, I argued that “Cameroon’s ‘language problem’ is neither pedagogic nor individual, it is political. And, it is at the core of Cameroon's unending crisis of identity.” Today’s national hand-wringing over Pidgin English is also not a pedagogic problem, as its critics would like us to believe, but part and parcel of that unending struggle between competing and conflicting visions about Cameroonian identity.
I will like to emphasize that my conclusion in no way ignores the real issue of falling English standards in Cameroon. However, rather than blaming Pidgin or any other language for these declining standards, we should turn to the educational system itself with its poorly-trained teachers and outdated language teaching methods which have barely changed since the 1960s. Once we factor in the nefarious influence of the dominant Francophone culture and its ubiquitous French language, then it becomes obvious why English standards are going down the drain…
Pidgin haters, meet your nemesis. You just want to be as English as the people of Cameroun across the Mungo are French. We are not like that.
Posted by: Facter | Friday, 15 January 2010 at 11:15 PM
I find nothing wrong in speaking Pidgin, AS long as a Language is a means of communication, pidgin is a language as it is use to communicate and many understand it.If you want to write Pidgin you will write Pidgin, And if you want to write English you will write english.
Posted by: Sesseku Arrey. | Saturday, 16 January 2010 at 07:45 AM
I think the World now needs a modern lingua franca as well :-)
Why not decide on a neutral non-national language, taught worldwide, in all nations? As a native English speaker, I would prefer Esperanto
Your readers may be interested in http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8837438938991452670.
A glimpse of Esperanto can be seen at http://www.lernu.net
Posted by: www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1004522862 | Saturday, 16 January 2010 at 02:15 PM
...positing that the poor english spoken and written in Cameroon is due to french influence is at most simplistic and at best a cheap political shot to lay blame far where it ought not to be sought.
...Millions of english language speakers in Cameroon and writers from the hinterlands in rural Ndian, Oku and Oshe would have made very little contact with the french language. However, there is no evidence that these persons who have had little contact with french language write and speak better english, to the group that have been exposed to french and the bilingual challenges of Cameroon. Folks from rural Cameroon with little exposure to french are even observed to speak bad english...and heavily infected with the pidgin virus.
To argue that the butchered vernacular called pidgin widely spoken in the english regions of cameroon does not influence the english that even matured scholarised cameroonians speak is an exercise in futility when the evidence abound. And no where is this evidence collated as in the University of Buea where its authorities had sensibly acknowledged the problem.
Harping on instrusive nature of the french language on people who themselves barely speak any french or are even antagonistic to the french language misses identifying the culprit of the poor english spoken and written by native Cameroonians. Unfortunately, the infectious nature of pidgin, its effects which could even be gleaned from the english spoken by Cameroonian scholars (some residing even in the UK or USA for more than 20 years with opportunities to make improvements), such infectious stubborness of the pidgin vernacular defeats the well meaning intention of Cameroon's education authorities.
Click here to listen to an anglophone Cameroonian express herself in english, and glean the challenges of the pidgin contagion:
http://wunc.org/tsot/archive/sot1229abc08.mp3/vie
More importantly, the challenges faced with the pidgin contagion is best described by the negro language or ebonics contagion in African American communities...the unwillingness to learn something better! "sabi yursef no bi cush"
Read more: http://www.answerbag.co.uk/q_view/78624
Posted by: The Entrepreneur Newsonline Inc. | Saturday, 16 January 2010 at 05:09 PM
I thought the article claimed that French also had a nefarious influence on Cameroonian English and not that french alone was to blame for this state of things????
Posted by: Ambe Johnson | Saturday, 16 January 2010 at 10:11 PM
French is one contributing factor. That is what the author says and backs up his assertion.
Hey. Who does this remind you of?
http://www.break.com/usercontent/2009/7/fail-robot-monkey-funny-toy-review-mike-mozart-of-jeepersmedia-924975.html
You know, a remote control device?
Posted by: Ma Mary | Saturday, 16 January 2010 at 11:20 PM
...As remote as the mary in: http://www.globalaffairs.org/forum/society-culture/56710-africans-less-intelligent-than-westerners.html
Posted by: The Entrepreneur Newsonline Inc. | Sunday, 17 January 2010 at 09:35 AM
Blame game? Sure, French bashing is en vogue and heroic for people who seek circumstancial evidence and not courageous not enough to look themselves in the mirror....
The debilitating blow of the pidgin english, a survilalist vernacular which rose from the ashes of 'anglophone' Cameroon's the colonial past,- natives attempting to communicate with something closer to the colonist's language...has meant that this historic vernacular - a butchered form of the english language - with no structure and construct of its own, spoken by ancestors, handed down to offsprings, has become a primary language for millions of kids. They grow with these supposedly primary language, their brain wired and telewired with butchered english.
School teaching is not enough to un-wire such a permanent construct in the brain. what difference would first-rate transmission and teaching methods make when children return home or to the community to live in the midst of the contagious pidgin virus?
Children are born with the ability to produce speech simply by hearing words and sentences spoken by adults around them,.e.g. pidgin. And so, the children of graduates too speak pidgin (primary vernacular of parents at home!)
Why do even Cameroonian university graduates or residents abroad find it hard to unshackle the pidgin baggage?
It is well established that the majority of children learn a language in the first five years of their lives (e.g. pidgin vernacular); they learn this language with very little error correction and often very little explicit instruction (e.g. pidgin); by the age of five they have a basically intact adult grammar (of pidgin); languages learnt in childhood stick (e.g. pidgin), while those learnt in adulthood rarely do (e.g. structured english).
Primary language programs such as the teaching of structured english and possibly french in anglophone cameroon, fail precisely because of a focus on classroom instruction. That is why the university of Buea position itself to fight the speaking of pidgin in and beyond its campus, in a supposedly 'english speaking province/region' in Cameroon.
Unfortunately the unwilling learners return to pidgin infested communities, and unable to sanitize their brain, they end up not only speaking, but walking, dancing, eating, coughing, writing, interacting and communicating like members of the uncultured community (e.g. around Bonamousadi, Molyko, Deido) where they spent 99% of their lives....
Posted by: The Entrepreneur Newsonline Inc. | Sunday, 17 January 2010 at 10:08 AM
So let's get this straight; someone rightly or wrongly argues that French is a contributing factor to the falling standards of English in Cameroon and that is "French bashing" but another person argues that Pidgin is the culprit and this person is just stating the facts, right? You guys are so funny; that trait Cameroonian trait of demonizing anything that we disagree with is alive and well - a more delibitating disease than corruption, absence of rule of law, and all those other ills that book people like to mention...
Posted by: Eyong Kingsley | Sunday, 17 January 2010 at 02:28 PM
CAM-TOK
Oyibo pass we for gramma,
We pass dem for Camfranglais!
For Ngola,
You wan tchop,
You go daso tok sei:
Massa, I wan dammer.
For we own kondre,
You wan axe youa kombi sei:
Bo’o, wheti you di fia sef?
You go daso tok sei:
Capo, tu fia même quoi, non?
Na so dis we own langua dei.
Mukala pass we wit Fransi,
We pass dem wit Cameroonese,
Driver wan tok sei,
Dis moto no get book,
Yi go daso tok sei:
L’homme, dis jalopi na clando.
You wan tok for youa small brother sei:
Mek we go, you daso tok sei:
Petit, vient on go.
Na so dis we own Camerounisme dei.
Yoruba dem pass we wit O káàrò!
We pass dem wit Cameroonianism.
You wan tok for youa friend sei,
You wan baratiner some nga,
You go daso tok sei:
Tara, I wan tchatcher da moumie.
Na so dis we own tchat dei.
Spanish pipo dem,
Pass we wit Hola!
We pass dem for Camerounais.
You want tok sei:
Dis akwara done drink ma mimbo free of charge,
You just tok sei,
Mola, da mbock done sule ma jobajo njoh.
Na so dis we own LINGO dei.
German pipo dem,
Pass we wit Guten Morgen!
We pass dem for Majunga Tok.
You wan tok sei,
Dis shumbu foolish taim no dei,
You daso tok sei,
Dis tara na popo moumou.
Na so Majunga Tok dei.
Swedish pipo dem
Pass we wit God morgon!
We pass dem wit Pidgin!
If you sleep for upside,
Youa friend axe you sei,
Massa, na which side you nang today?
You go tell yi sei,
Mbombo, I done nangaboko aujourd’hui.
Na so Kam-Tok dei.
Italian dem
Pass we wit Buon giorno!
But we pass dem wit Camspeak.
You wan tok sei,
Dis woman na ma njumba,
You go daso langua sei:
Dis titi na ma deuxième bureau.
Na so Camspeak dei.
Russian dem,
Pass we wit Dobroye utro!
We pass dem wit Camfranglais.
You wan tell youa oyibo friend sei:
I am going to give this police officer a bribe,
You go daso gist yi sei:
Massa, I wan tchoko da mange-mille.
Na so dis we own tori dei.
Zulu dem,
Pass we wit Umhlala gahle!
We pass dem wit à tout casser tok.
You wan tok sei:
Da katika di mek daso hop eye,
You go daso tok sei:
Da djintete di mek na daso siscia.
Na so tok for Camer dei.
Na some tete for long crayon be tok sei,
“When in Rome do like the Romans”.
From for dat no,
I tok ma own sei:
When in the Cameroons,
Tok as the Camers do!
Lef da yeye Nasara langua!
© vakunta 2009
Posted by: Wuteh | Sunday, 17 January 2010 at 05:16 PM
Vakunta, that was a good one.
Posted by: Va Boy | Sunday, 17 January 2010 at 06:17 PM
Vakunta,
I hope you do not imply this your construct is what is widely spoken in the streets of Bamenda and Buea.
Or the style popularised by Lapiro de Mbanga,
you allude to, has taken over the pidgin spoken in CDC plantations in Moliwe?
I wonder howmany of our grandmothers wake up in Bamenda and say:
Tara, I wan tchatcher da moumie.
Petit, vient on go
Ni, da mbock done sule ma jobajo njoh
Da djintete di mek na daso siscia.
When in the Cameroons,
Tok as the Camers do!
....Really? This is how Cameroonians speak?
Posted by: The Entrepreneur Newsonline Inc. | Monday, 18 January 2010 at 04:42 AM
There is ample evidence that children with multiple language skills develop to adults with better intelligence.
Teach your children from conception day one: structured English, French, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Ngemba, Duala etc,
Begin correcting societal ills with the basic instrument you have: "your involvement". Waiting for teachers to re-wire brains that are steeped in poor wiring from poor home environment is a task that can never be fulfilled....Ask the residents in Harlem, Bronx, etc...Obama was able to compartmentalize and sneaked himself out of the handicap...Negro language?
Empirical evidence abounds in Cameroon's colleges and universities: graduates who memorized huge volumes of material, regurgitated and scored better grades, yet can't communicate, can't hold a reasonable conversation in English or French, after leaving college...can't...can't....can't....can't even help themselves,...can't..........//QED
Enjoy Life and As our grandfathers say in Kumbo and in Oku: 'Dis titi na ma deuxième bureau'...Really?
Posted by: The Entrepreneur Newsonline Inc. | Monday, 18 January 2010 at 04:59 AM
Vakunta,
The style of pidgin you present here,
is what in Cameroon is referred to as
'mboko' talk. Or 'ndos' vernacular.
In english, this is the communication of
rascals ('ndos') and thieves ('mboko').
To posit that this is mainstream in Cameroon
is misleading, especially to caucasian colleagues
who've never been to the field to ascertain the reliability of your construct.
I wonder howmany Pastors and Priests stand in the pulpit and say: 'Dis tara na popo moumou.'
There is intellectual capital to exploit this subset of a vernacular spoken by less than 0.1% of Cameroonian and get publish, but to mislead the world that this is pidgin at its best is disingenous!
Posted by: The Entrepreneur Newsonline Inc. | Monday, 18 January 2010 at 05:11 AM
I have to agree with Entrepreneur on this one; this is not the good old "West African Pidgin English" spoken (albeit in with variations) in Anglophone Cameroon, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, etc.)."Massa, I wan tchoko da mange-mille." is NOT pidgin!!! And if today Anglophone academics are telling us that this is what passes for Cameroon Pidgin, then the "politics of Pidgin" may actually be at work, with the slow and steady appropriation of Pidgin English by Francophone thugs brazenly aided and abetted by Anglophone linguists like Vakunta...
Posted by: Na so so me | Monday, 18 January 2010 at 08:54 AM
So True, franglais pidgin is not pidgin. It is gutter pidgin and not the salt of the earth language spoken by our grandparents.
Posted by: Antoine | Monday, 18 January 2010 at 02:08 PM
Language,like anything else is not stagnant. It evolves over time. Pidgin is a form of language and it is evolving like any other language. I have been out of Cameroon for over 25 years and still able to read what Vantuka has written.
Great job Vantuka. Keep it up.
Posted by: njimaforboy | Monday, 18 January 2010 at 05:24 PM
I blame English, Pidgin, French, my parents and the constant movement of the family (Transfers) for not being able to speak my humble dialect.
I spoke English in UB and did business in Pidgin. Agree or disagree I my profit depended on the language. And sure pidgin was my language of choice.
Posted by: kene | Tuesday, 19 January 2010 at 10:38 AM
Globalisation is taking its toll seriously on even remote areas of the world and anything that seeks to exclude others will only hamper the progress of those within that closed set. It's true that everything evolves including language but when we promote the use of anything that deters progress, we would obviously suffer the long term effects.
I think mainstream anglophone Pidgin is more inclusive than the mix-up that Vakunta has written above. I mean inclusive to other West African varieties. This doesn't erase the fact what he has written is what obtains but how beneficial is that to larger groupings? It wasn't until the highly educated and famous like Vakunta took to the use of this language in public that the uneducated kept aside the ignominy that had been part of them for decades. It was this feeling of inferiority that push them to send their kids to school. It was this same feeling that chased some of them to enrol in adult literacy centres. Today, convincing an uneducated adult that he stands to benefit more from acquiring some certifications has become relatively tedious. Aspirations have been dashed and role models are almost impossible to find.
Posted by: Bob Bristol | Tuesday, 19 January 2010 at 12:47 PM
POET OF DI PIPO
Mek I tori wuna dis wan,
Mek wuna ya’ram well,well.
ME, I be na poet of di pipo.
Wheda you long like bamboo,
Or you short like barlok,
Poet of di pipo no get youa taim.
No laugh!
Dis wan no be palava for show teeth!
If you tok nonsense,
Poet of di pipo go gee you!
Foreseka sei poet of di pipo
No get some man yi taim.
Poet of di pipo
Di tok daso yi turu tok,
If poet of the pipo ya lie-lie tok,
Yi go writ’am sei
Dis wan na wuru-wuru tok.
If yi ya correct tok,
Yi go writ’am sei
Dis wan na popo tok.
Na so poet of di pipo dei yi.
Poet of di pipo
No di chop for two pot.
If you tif,
Poet of di pipo go tok sei,
You be na tif man.
If you di tok two tok,
Poet of di pipo go tok sei,
You be na lie lie man.
Na so poet of di pipo dei yi.
Yi no di fia yi some man.
If ngomna tif vote,
Poet of di pipo go tok sei,
Ngomna dong tif election.
Yi no go shut up yi mop.
No man no fit try
For shut up Poet of di pipo
yi mop wit soya.
D’ailleurs sef, poet of di poet
No di chop yi soya!
Wheda you be djintete,
Or you be chargeur for Marché Mokolo,
Poet of di pipo
No di knack hand for you!
Bekoz you no be dirty
Wey you fit fall for yi eye.
If you wan mek poet of di pipo carry youa kwah,
You must tok daso youa turu tok
Poet of di pipo
Badhart koni tok taim no dei!
If you sabi mek wayo,
Taim wey you nye poet of di pipo,
Mek you daso pick tokyo jump for bush,
Bekoz sei poet of di pipo
No di choose some man!
Yi go daso take yi long crayon,
Yi écrire some big buk for youa head,
And da buk no go be na fain waka.
Na so poet of di pipo dei yi.
Oyibo dem di tok sei:
Poet of the people tells it as it is,
He couldn’t care less whose ox is gored!
Ha, dis wan na buk sah!
So no,
All tif pipo dem for Ngola,
All lie-lie pipo dem for Yaoundé,
All koni pipo dem for Sangmelima,
All feyman dem for Douala,
All clando pipo dem for Bonamussadi,
All famla pipo dem for Medùmba,
All Essingam pipo dem for Mvomeka
Mek wuna sabi sei poet of di pipo
No di kop nye.
Wuna must lookot!
Foreseka sei poet of di pipo
No di keep bad ting for yi beleh
Bekoz poet of di pipo yi beleh
No be lantrine at all, at all!
Yi nye yi must langua,
Na so poet of di pipo dei yi.
Copyright Vakunta 2010
Posted by: Dr Vakunta | Wednesday, 20 January 2010 at 12:07 AM
Chargeur?
Whatever happened to motorboy?
Posted by: Va Boy | Wednesday, 20 January 2010 at 05:55 AM
all over the world people go to university to advance their trades and also to advance society at large. what advancement is vakunta doing? for us southern cameroonians. none, maybe to the thieves, the idiots and the rapists of la republique du cameroun, such as lapiro,
thats one more reason why southern cameroons needs its independence yesterday, to sanitize
itself from these wretched lots
Posted by: dango tumma | Wednesday, 20 January 2010 at 08:34 PM
Cameroon's inherited culture of French and English Language is Destructive to the language
capital we inherited from our ancestors.
Unable to speak better French or English, we have opted for butchered versions. Adding salt to injury, dishonest public officials have resorted to translating texts by themselves without consulting the experts. This is a slap on Cameroon's bilingualism.
But to opine, and hold steadfast that the pidgin spoken in Idenau, Ikiliwindi, Oku is an influence of french, is a monumental spin....spun out of context.
na wo wan shisha me?
man no run....!
na wo shai da pipi dem dey
whey dem sey dem wan dei un kontri
fo suden kamelun?
Na pidgin go bi dia na national language?
Posted by: The Entrepreneur Newsonline Inc. | Wednesday, 20 January 2010 at 08:51 PM
entrepeuner, please stop brainwashing yourself.
cameroun inherited french cultures(a different country) while southern cameroons inherited english language culture.
threst falls in place, are you dumb ass?
even with all these write ups? biya himself have affirmed that. monkey.sombo.
Posted by: dango tumma | Thursday, 21 January 2010 at 09:14 PM
Cameroon Pidgin English is a boon and it is a bane, depending on whose prism one views through. I recall watching two nice Cameroonians almost coming to blows over this issue, one claiming that there was nothing wrong with speaking pidgin while the other thought is was one of the worst things that ever happened to English-speaking Cameroon. “If the white man can come here, learn it and speak it so well” the first argued, “who are you to denigrate it?”
“But the white man who speaks pidgin English is doing so simply for the short duration of time he is here to sell his product” countered the other. “It is in the interest of such a white man to reach as many persons as possible with his product – the gospel, okrika, development project or whatever. He eventually returns to his world, a much wider world where Pidgin English serves absolutely no purpose at all.” And so Cameroonians are left to make their pick.
Cameroonians who speak Pidgin English do so for a number of reasons. Some never had the opportunity of going to school to learn Standard English. Others considered the rigors of grammar, syntax, phonetics and other headaches that go with the language an unnecessary and avoidable headache. Some persons drift between the two, depending on whether they are at home with illiterate family, in offices where nothing better presents itself, at the radio station, at the motor park, in the classroom, amphitheater etc. The field is vast but one thing is true – language as a means of communication is spoken with an audience in mind. It is a waste of time, energy, words etc to speak just for the sake of speaking.
An interesting problem is created when both standard and pidgin English are used to address a certain type of audience. It is pretty much like the tailor who patches an immaculate white shirt using brown or other colored khaki material! Consider this anecdote from one of our nurses dispatched by a surgeon to go and look for alternative illumination following one of SONEL’s many power blackouts. As the doctor was concerned about his patient coming off anesthesia, he called and asked the nurse if she had not found the gas lamp. “I found it but did not see it, doctor” came the reply. Poor doctor! He shook his head in wonderment, how anybody could find something but still not see it. Of course in the Pidgin English psyche of the nurse, it made all the sense in the world. As a matter of fact she was dignifying with some amount of “grammar” what in strict pidgin rendition would have been “I fanam I no seeam”. That is a challenge for those who find nothing wrong with Pidgin English. The other challenge is when examination questions written in French are subsequently translated into English by someone whose command of the language leaves much to be desired, the type of English advocating cleanliness, displayed in boards around Nsimalen airport. Well, most
English speaking students failed the examination, being unable to make sense of the translation. For those who care, Mrs Sophie Lebga wrote a fantastic thesis on the iinterference effect of pidgin Englsih on real English. Why not take a look at her ENS thesis?
When I hear disdainful expressions like “Bamenda English: or “Buea English” uttered by French-speaking Cameroonians who find fault with the quality of language in these Anglophone towns, I marvel at the human mind. Yesterday it was the fashionable thing to do to go to Buea or Bamenda and actually learn the right thing; today both towns are held in contempt. When the Arab allowed his camel to creep into his tent, did he not pay a similar price? English is hardly the only Anglophone trophy that was allowed to go to the dogs simply because of the lofty goal of accommodating “our brothers east of the Mungo”. Short memory is a bad thing. It really is.
Posted by: J. S. Dinga | Friday, 05 November 2010 at 08:48 PM