Josip Juraj Strossmayer University of Osijek. Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences. Department of English Language and Literature.
Abstract
Cameroonian Pidgin English, discussed in this paper, is a linguistic entity of Cameroon. Its speakers usually call it pidgin or country talk and linguists refer to it as Cameroon(ian) Pidgin (English), but recently the media has begun to use Kamtok, to stress that it is local and useful, despite having no official status. It is an English-based creole language spoken by about 5% of Cameroonians (as native speakers of the language), while an estimated 50% of the population speaks it in some form. It is a blend of English, French and indigenous languages. Kamtok has various forms, reflecting the age, education, regional provenance, mother tongue, and linguistic proficiency of its users. It has relatively high prestige, and is preferred informally among Africans of different ethnic groups, ranking just below French and English as a vehicle for mobility from rural villages into modern urban life. It sustains a world view, culture and way of life. It facilitates social intercourse among people who originate from different ethnic and linguistic backgrounds. It is rich, exciting and vigorous. Kamtok accommodates grammatical distortions and deviations from syntactic conventions. It is one of so many mixed languages that exist on the African continent and that shows the linguistic/cultural richness of Africans
