Legitimizing the development and use of Cameroon’s national languages: Lessons from COVID-19

The advent of COVID-19 has revealed the inability of the Cameroonian Government to provide information to all its citizens in the languages they understand best since a majority of the languages are neither developed for use nor empowered by the language policy of the country. Based on  data from online and secondary sources this study highlights and insists on the necessity to develop and use national languages in official communication particularly when transmitting health related information. If this is done, it will become possible to easily reach out to all Cameroonians with vital information for their wellbeing whenever need be. Other sectors of the country such as education and agriculture would benefit squarely from a language policy that incorporates the language of each and every Cameroonian. Keywords: Legitimize, development, use, national languages, Cameroon, COVID-19   L’avènement du COVID-19 a révélé l’incapacité du gouvernement camerounais à informer ses citoyens dans les langues qu’ils comprennent  puisqu’une majorité de ces langues ne sont ni développées pour être utilisées ni habilitées par la politique linguistique du pays. Sur la base de données provenant de sources en ligne et secondaires, cette contribution souligne et insiste sur la nécessité de développer et d’utiliser les langues nationales dans la communication officielle, en particulier lorsqu’il s’agit de transmettre des informations liées à la santé. Si cela est fait, il deviendra possible de tendre facilement la main à tous les Camerounais chaque fois qu’il sera nécessaire de leur transmettre des informations vitales pour leur bien-être. D’autres secteurs du pays, tels que l’éducation et l’agriculture, bénéficieraient aussi d’une politique linguistique qui intègre la langue de chaque Camerounais. Mots clés : Légitimer, développement, utilisation, langues nationales, Cameroun, COVID-1

The expression of diminutivity in Central Ring Grassfields Bantu

oai:hup1.journals.sub.uni-hamburg.de:article/203Studies on the expression of diminutivity in Bantoid languages of the Cameroonian Grassfields have tended to focus on the role that noun class derivation plays within the familiar Bantu paradigm. A closer look at individual branches of Bantoid, however, reveals a more complex picture, which rather suggests a division of labour between derivational strategies and compounding and/or periphrasis. This contribution zooms in on the languages of the Central Ring (CR) branch of Grassfields Bantu, presenting an overview of diminutivisation strategies found here: the notorious transfer to gender 19/6a, which is at times, accompanied by the addition of a semantically bleached suffix –CV, and periphrasis in associative constructions headed by nouns with inherent diminutive meanings such as ‘child’.

Literal and metaphorical usages of Babanki EAT and DRINK verbs

In Babanki, a Grassfields Bantu language of North-West Cameroon, two of the numerous consumption verbs, namely the generic verbs ʒɨ́ ‘eat’ and ɲʉ́ ‘drink’, constitute a major source of metaphorical extensions outside the domain of ingestion. Setting out from a characterisation of the basic meanings of these two lexical items as they emerge from their paradigmatic relations within the semantic field of alimentation processes, this paper explores the figurative usages of the two verbs and their underlying semantic motivations. Semantic extensions that radiate from eat can be subsumed under two closely related structural metaphors, i.e. APPROPRIATION OF RESOURCES IS EATING and WINNING IS EATING. The first metaphor construes the acquisition and exploitation of non-food items such as material possession as eating, while the second metaphor casts the acquisition of immaterial advantage in the mould of eating. Both metaphors have further entailments, i.e. the derivation of pleasure from consumption of resources, the depletion of resources via consumption and the deprivation of a third party from access to these resources. Semantic extensions that radiate from drink can be accounted for in two structural metaphors, i.e. INHALATION IS DRINKING and ABSORPTION IS DRINKING. Remarkably, some metaphorical extensions of consumption verbs attested in other African languages, such as extensions of EAT for sexual intercourse and for killing, and the extensions of DRINK for undergoing trouble and enduring painful experiences are absent in Babanki

LANGUAGE IN CONTACT: THE CASE OF THE FULƁE DIALECT OF KEJOM (BABANKI)

This paper describes the variety of Babanki (henceforth called Kejom) spoken by native Fulfulde speakers born and raised in Kejom communities. Kejom is a Center Ring Grassfi elds Bantu language spoken in two villages (Kejom Ketinguh and Kejom Keku) in northwestern Cameroon. This paper describes the practice in Kejom Ketinguh. The Fulɓe are Fulfulde speakers of Adamawa origin who migrated from northern Cameroon and settled in Kejom more than 50 years ago. Peaceful coexistence between the two groups has encouraged young Fulɓe to learn the Kejom language and to use it when interacting with Kejom people. Comparison of the speech of Fulɓe and native speakers of Kejom revealed that the Kejom spoken by the Fulɓe (the Fulɓe dialect) contains phonological, morphological, syntactic, and lexical deviations from the standard variety spoken by Kejom people. In addition to Fulfulde (the Fulɓe mother tongue), Cameroon Pidgin English (their second language) has also infl uenced the Fulɓe dialect of Kejom. We argue in this paper that the Fulɓe prefer to rely on Cameroon Pidgin English to fi ll most communication gaps with native Kejom speakers, because this widely used language is common to both communities

Theory and description in African Linguistics: Selected papers from the 47th Annual Conference on African Linguistics

The papers in this volume were presented at the 47th Annual Conference on African Linguistics at UC Berkeley in 2016. The papers offer new descriptions of African languages and propose novel theoretical analyses of them. The contributions span topics in phonetics, phonology, syntax, semantics, and pragmatics and reflect the typological and genetic diversity of languages in Africa. Four papers in the volume examine Areal Features and Linguistic Reconstruction in Africa, and were presented at a special workshop on this topic held alongside the general session of ACAL

Theory and description in African Linguistics: Selected papers from the 47th Annual Conference on African Linguistics

The papers in this volume were presented at the 47th Annual Conference on African Linguistics at UC Berkeley in 2016. The papers offer new descriptions of African languages and propose novel theoretical analyses of them. The contributions span topics in phonetics, phonology, syntax, semantics, and pragmatics and reflect the typological and genetic diversity of languages in Africa. Four papers in the volume examine Areal Features and Linguistic Reconstruction in Africa, and were presented at a special workshop on this topic held alongside the general session of ACAL

Theory and description in African Linguistics: Selected papers from the 47th Annual Conference on African Linguistics

The papers in this volume were presented at the 47th Annual Conference on African Linguistics at UC Berkeley in 2016. The papers offer new descriptions of African languages and propose novel theoretical analyses of them. The contributions span topics in phonetics, phonology, syntax, semantics, and pragmatics and reflect the typological and genetic diversity of languages in Africa. Four papers in the volume examine Areal Features and Linguistic Reconstruction in Africa, and were presented at a special workshop on this topic held alongside the general session of ACAL

Theory and description in African Linguistics: Selected papers from the 47th Annual Conference on African Linguistics

The papers in this volume were presented at the 47th Annual Conference on African Linguistics at UC Berkeley in 2016. The papers offer new descriptions of African languages and propose novel theoretical analyses of them. The contributions span topics in phonetics, phonology, syntax, semantics, and pragmatics and reflect the typological and genetic diversity of languages in Africa. Four papers in the volume examine Areal Features and Linguistic Reconstruction in Africa, and were presented at a special workshop on this topic held alongside the general session of ACAL

Theory and description in African Linguistics: Selected papers from the 47th Annual Conference on African Linguistics

The papers in this volume were presented at the 47th Annual Conference on African Linguistics at UC Berkeley in 2016. The papers offer new descriptions of African languages and propose novel theoretical analyses of them. The contributions span topics in phonetics, phonology, syntax, semantics, and pragmatics and reflect the typological and genetic diversity of languages in Africa. Four papers in the volume examine Areal Features and Linguistic Reconstruction in Africa, and were presented at a special workshop on this topic held alongside the general session of ACAL