Testing TwoChanging Colonial Linguistic Boundaries: A Sociolinguistic Survey of English Spread in Cameroon between 1960 and 2018
ABSTRACT
The
paper examines the status and growth of the English Language in all its
varieties and in terms of numbers and geographical space it occupies in
Cameroon. The country uses post colonial languages: English and French as Official Languages of equal status but with unequal
distribution at the national level. We focus on the linguistic geography (geolinguistics) of Cameroon; the distribution
and actual representation of its people’s English language practices from
independence to today. We assert that
the geolinguistic
distribution of Cameroon-Francophone and Cameroon-Anglophone is being narrowed
by the national spread of English. Francophones are now making more efforts
consistently to learn and use English in more and more domains of their daily
life. 45 % of children in the best performing Anglo-Saxon sub-system schools
are of Francophone origin. This led us to pose the following questions: Why the
English language is changing in Cameroon? How are specific resources associated
with English effectively being spread to Francophone Cameroon? How are the new
people in Francophone Cameroon effectively using the English resources? We came
out with these hypotheses that guided the study: 1. Determination of
Anglophones to maintain and develop their cultural heritage and increase in
numbers of Anglophiles; 2. The Anglophones quest for jobs and other survival
needs in Cameroon and the government’s bilingual policy; 3.The Francophones
aspire for a better future in English speaking nations of the world. These
factors have pushed and spread English from two regions to the other eight
French speaking Regions of Cameroon. Survey Data was collected from
archives and from the administering of 150 questionnaires, 20 observations and
20 interviews on the phenomenon of English language dynamics in Cameroon.
Analysis of Census figures from 1960 and the current language dynamics in the
country reveal significant increase of the English speaking population of
Cameroon from [1.083.587
(20%)]
in 1960
to [12.915.070 (52%)] out of a
population of 24,836,674 in 2018.
KEY WORDS: English language, status, spread, geolinguistics, anglophiles, push and pull factors
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