Article Type: Case Study Article Citation: Charles Esambe Alobwede.
(2020). THE REPOSSESSION OF A COMPLEX LANGUAGE: THE CASE OF THE FRENCH LANGUAGE
IN CAMEROON. International Journal of Research -GRANTHAALAYAH, 8(5), 208-220. https://doi.org/10.29121/granthaalayah.v8.i5.2020.134 Received Date: 18 May 2020 Accepted Date: 31 May 2020 Keywords: Repossession Imposition Colonisation Language Variety Appropriation Camfranglais Complex Language This article sets
out to study the evolution of the French language in Cameroon from the period
of colonisation to the present. The article focuses in particular on the use of the language during the colonial
period and its imposition on Cameroonians through the French policy of
assimilation. Contrary to the British policy of indirect rule, France
considered its colonies as oversea territories (la France outre-mer)
whichss had to speak and write the French language in
a manner as prescribed by the Académie Française. Our
investigation looks at the evolution of the language after independence and the
different varieties that developed from mainstream French: these include
Cameroon popular French (CPF) or the social variety, and a hybrid variety (camfranglais) used mostly by the younger generation of
Cameroonians. We aim at evaluating the influence of the latter variety, in order to analyse the radical
transformation process that the French language is experiencing in French
Africa in general and in Cameroon in particular. The article aims at validating
our hypothesis that the French language as used in Cameroon is a repossession
of a very complex language. 1.
INTRODUCTION
“Ma Patrie, c’est la
langue que j’écris”
(Antoine Rivarol : 1784, qtd. in Le
français hors de France). My
homeland is the language I write. The use of a language in every sociolinguistic
environment is peculiar to every country. Cameroon is situated in the CEMAC0F[1] zone in
Central Africa and partly in West Africa, bordering the Bight of Biafra in
Nigeria. The country is sometimes referred to as “Africa in miniature” because
it exhibits all the major climates and vegetation of the African continent:
mountains, desert, rain forest, savannah, grassland, and ocean coastland, as
well as three of the four major language groups in the continent. The country
has 279 home languages (Ethnologue, 2005) shared by a
population of almost twenty million inhabitants. There are two official
languages: French and English, and other lingua franca used for interaction
among the citizens. The French language has a wider use than any other language
giving that four-fifth of the country is officially French-speaking and
one-fifth, English-speaking. Literacy in French for individuals of age 12 and
above, rose from 41.3% to 57.6% between 1987 and 2005 while that of English
rose from 13.4% to 25.3% within the same period. The global proportion of
individuals literate in official languages markedly increased between 1987 and
2015. A study carried out in 2005 shows that, the
probability to be literate in French while being Anglophone is 0.46% while that
of being literate in English while being Francophone is 0.20%, resulting from
the predominant status of the French language in the country as a whole. The
tendency has persisted especially with the present highly urban exodus as a result of the “Anglophone” crisis which started in
November 2016. Table 1: Literacy in official languages according to the 2005
census (Population of age 12 and above)
Source:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_Cameroon Table 2: Literacy in official languages according to the 2005
census (Population of age 15 and above)
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_Cameroon The French language thus plays the role of an official
language, of a second language, of a foreign language and of a mother-tongue
(for a minute number of Cameroonian children). It is used in the administration,
in churches, in the court rooms, in daily interaction, in schools, etc. (Wamba and Noumssi 2006; Biloa 2003; Onguene Essono 1996). Giving the bilingual nature of the country, the
linguistic environment imposes on the user of the French language, a number of constraints. The switch from an L1 French
situation to an L2 situation is not as smooth as one can think, for the speaker
has a mass of information, not only from his/her L1, but equally from all the
other languages he/she is confronted with in his/her plural-linguistic
environment. The French language was introduced in Cameroon after
the First World War with the defeat of Germany by the combined Allied forces.
In 1919, the League of Nations partitioned Cameroon between the French (4/5 of
the territory) and the British (1/5 of the territory). Today, the particular practice of the French language in the country
has enabled it to be both a common language and a vernacular language. There
are various factors which explain this. Historically, the process of the
expansion of the French language was done through schools which trained skilled
persons whose task consisted in exploiting agricultural and natural resources
on behalf of the colonial companies. From a political and ideological view point, the French language, for the colonisers, was the
instrument used to bring civilisation to the colonised who were thought or
misunderstood to be backwards. Under these conditions, the home languages were
and continue to be relegated to a lower level. Like the colonial authorities,
the leaders of independent Cameroon have continued to perpetuate the linguistic
policy favourable to Western languages (French and English) for the
reinforcement of national unity and the enhancement of cordial relationship with
other countries. The French language, as practiced in Cameroon today,
is the result of a long process. Many factors have contributed to shape the
face of the language and have had effects on the perception of francophone
Cameroonians. Apart from the factor earlier mentioned, other factors are linked
to the implantation of the language in French colonies and the quality of the
language to which indigenes were exposed. The choice of the variety or
varieties of the language imposed by the French in its colonies was not short
of political or even ideological ulterior motives. During the colonial period, a number of pedagogic practices nourished the existing
colonial ideology. The present article outlines the historical background
to the study and the conditions on which the French language was implanted in
Cameroon. The article will analyse the evolution of the language after
independence, a period during which other factors such as the multiplicity of
the languages spoken, democratisation and the rapid development of schools,
with as consequence, massive school failures at every level of the system,
favoured the constitution of various distinct varieties of the language in
Cameroon within a multilingual setup. 2.
HISTORICAL
BACKGROUND
As earlier said, the French language was introduced in
Cameroon after the First World War which saw the defeat of Germany in 1918 by
the combined Allied forces. Before this date, Germany had annexed the country
in 1884 and imposed the German language which was used side-by-side with the
home languages. The coming of French and English after the war saw a turning
point in the linguistic landscape of the country. After the Versailles Peace
Treaty in 1919, Cameroon was handed as a mandated territory to France and
Britain for governance. While Britain adopted indirect rule to govern its
section of the country, the French applied the policy of assimilation as was
the case in all other French colonies in Africa. In the domain of education, the major orientation
given by the French to schools in Cameroon aimed at producing utilitarian
Cameroonians. Hardy cited by
S.P. Ekanza (1972, p. 163) writes, “Nos écoles professionnelles
s’attachent avant tout à
former des dessinateurs, des mécaniciens,
des ouvriers à fer (forgerons, ajusteurs), des chaudronniers.” A similar idea is expounded by Albert Tévodjré cited by Ekanza (ibid)
in the following terms, “l’enseignement sera développé
aux colonies dans la mesure où
il servira les intérêts coloniaux.” Thus,
schools were needed to train auxiliaries of the administration, interpreters,
and traders to run the state of affairs. The need for auxiliaries, capable of assisting the
colonial authority to put in place its politico-economic expansionist programme
determined the choice of the academic content. The French language was to be
the priority language in the teaching of the content. During this period,
teaching was essentially related to practical economy. The major concern of the
colonialists was systematic exploitation of human and agricultural resources
without any investment. Such preoccupation was reflected at three levels in
structuring the academic content; the ‘village
school’, the ‘regional school’, and the ‘urban school’. ‘Village schools’ were not tailored to issue academic
certificates. Everything theoretical was forbidden, and only what was for
immediate consumption was recommended. The school did not aim at training an
elite, but auxiliary subalterns, interpreters, cooks, etc. ‘Regional schools’,
on the other hand, were found at the headquarters of circles. Pupils who
attended such schools were among the best from the ‘village schools’.
They were taught agriculture and manual labour. At the end of the 4th
year, students graduated with certificates in agriculture, woodwork,
bricklaying, tailoring, etc. ‘Urban schools’ were found in the capital city
(Yaoundé). These were reserved for European children and a few children of
similar status: children of chiefs and those of civil servants. The syllabus
for ‘urban schools’ was that of Metropolitan France. At the end of the 6th
year, the students were awarded the Certificat d’Etudes Primaires1F[2]. While the ‘village schools’ and the ‘regional schools’
were training pupils for manual and rural labour, the ‘urban schools’ prepared
the pupils for trade and as state employees for the colonial administration.
The fundamental question here is to know in what language content was taught. 3.
THE
FRENCH CONCEPT OF A SUPERIOR LANGUAGE
“Tout français, ou presque, se sent ou se croit grammarien
de droit divin”. This tongue-in-check
remark by the French linguist, Pierre Alexandre (1967) contains more than a
grain of truth. Indeed, he goes
on to note that: “La France est, autant que je sache, le seul
pays au monde où la plupart
des journaux populaires possèdent une chronique
grammaticale” (ibid: 35). More
alarming is the declaration by Sorbonne Professor, René Etiemble:
“The French language is a treasure. To violate it is a crime. Persons were shot
during the war for treason. They should be punished for degrading the language”
(qtd. in Lockwood, 1973) In 1539, François I signed an ordinance at Villers-Cotterêts imposing the use of French in all official
documents. This historic event not only signalled one of the first French acts
of liberation from Latin, but also marked the beginning of a policy suppressing
other languages spoken throughout France in the affirmation of centralised
power. The 16th century also saw the publication
of DuBellay’s celebrated Défense et illustration de la langue française
(1549), a manifesto of the Plëiade group affirming
the excellence of French as a literary language. But it is in the 17th
century, with the writings of the poet, Malherbe and the grammarian, Vaugelas and the founding of the Academie
Française by Richelieu (an institution that has
survived into the 21st century) that the purification and reform of
the French language began in earnest. The claim of the superiority of French,
owing to its crystal clarity and rigour which dates from this period, as well
as a vigorous defence of it from outside impurities, has continued even to this
day as the above quotation from René Etiemble
attests. The position given the language by the French,
reflects a long-standing and deep-seated conviction that their language is
intimately tied to their identity and grandeur as a nation and as a
civilisation. In an article published in New
York Times, a former French Prime Minister, Edouard Balladur, asserts that
defending the French tongue is, “an act of faith in the future of our country”
and his minister of Culture, Jacques Toubou, would
later declare in support of the law that, for the French, their language, “is
their primary capital, the symbol of the dignity, the passageway to
integration, the diapason of a universal culture, a common heritage, part of
the French dream” (qtd. in Riding). Indeed, the French see their language as a
supreme civilizing force and, giving the belief in the superiority of theirs,
over the centuries the French have deemed it their sacred mission to bring its
benefits to those ‘unfortunate enough’ not to speak the language. Fredric Michelman (1995)
concludes in one of his writings that, if ‘inferior’ languages do exist,
however, in keeping with the egalitarian ideals of the French Revolution, there
are no intrinsically inferior peoples, only those who are at a lower level of
development. Western humanistic values, best embodied in French culture and
language, the argument runs, are therefore ‘universal’ and are accessible to
all. Thus, the 18th century writer, Rivarol
could assert: “sure, sociable, reasonable, it is no longer only the French
language, it is the human language” (qtd in Gordon); and 20th
century philosopher, Etienne Gilson could write: “Notre particularité, c’est
notre universalité”
(qtd in Betts). Many critics have characterised this so-called ‘universality’
as blatant ethnocentrism (Gordon, ibid), and it is clear that this principle
justified, for the French, the ‘civilising mission’ carried out in Africa and
elsewhere in the French Empire. 4.
FRENCH
LANGUAGE POLICY IN CAMEROON: 1918 TO THE BRAZZAVILLE CONFERENCE
French linguistic policy in the colonies in general
and in Cameroon in particular was in line with
colonialist ideology. Colonisation was considered an integral part of the
French ‘civilisation’ and ‘humanitarian’ mission; a doctrine which the French
Resident General in Morocco summarised thus: La colonisation, telle que nous l’avons toujours comprise n’est que la haute expression de la civilisation.
À des peuples arriérés ou demeurés à l’écart
des évolutions modernes,
ignorant parfois les formes
du bien-être le plus élémentaire,
nous apportons le progrès, l’hygiène, la culture morale et intellectuelle,
nous les aidons à s’élever
sur l’échelle de l’humanité.
Cette mission civilisatrice,
nous l’avons toujours remplie à l’avant-garde de toutes les nations et elle est un de nos plus beaux titres de gloire. (Cited in
Boutin, 2002, p. 29). The vector of this civilisation mission was nothing
else but the French language. Teach the colonised people the French language,
and with that, learning the French culture will be seen as
a patriotic duty and as a moral obligation. The French linguist, Pierre
Alexandre, in a sardonic verve, sums up the French colonial policy in education
and administration: La politique coloniale française en matière d’éducation et d’administration est facile à définir ;
c’est celle de François 1er,
de Richelieu, de Robespierre et de Jules Ferry. Une seule
langue est enseignée dans
les écoles, admise dans les tribunaux,
utilisée dans l’administration : le français, tel que défini par les avis de l’Académie et les décrets du ministre de l’Instruction Publique. Toutes les autres langues ne sont que folklore,
tutu panpan, obscurantisme,
biniou et bourrée, et ferments de désintégration de
la République. (111-112). These ideological principles, already experimented in
France, will show their limits in the colonies and especially in Cameroon with
the existence of a plethora of languages. The general multilingual situation,
the absence of qualified staff and especially the structuring of the school
system into ‘village schools’, ‘regional schools’, and ‘urban schools’ created
a situation where teaching in the indigenous languages could not have been
forbidden completely. A circular
note dated 5 January 1939 stipulated that, in line with a letter signed by
Colonies, “l’usage des langues indigènes… est autorisé à titre complémentaire pour l’enseignement
pratique et pour l’éducation
professionnelle ou ménagère” (extract of circular note quoted by Queffelec, 1955). In application of the circular note, a number of textbooks were written in some home languages.
This experience was short-lived and the multitude of idiomatic expressions in
the home languages was raised as a reason to definitely impose the French
language as the only language of education, giving that even in France, the
same argument was raised to drop the use of ‘patois’ as wanted by Father
Grégoire, when during the convention of 20th July 1793 he declared: Il faut qu’on examine la nécessité et les
moyens d’anéantir les
patois et d’universaliser l’usage
de la langue française, car dans l’étendue
de toute la nation, tant de
jargons sont autant de barrières qui gênent les mouvements du commerce. The linguistic phenomenon that marked the situation of
the French language in Cameroon was the coming of the French infantry (le français tirailleur) during a time when there was
hesitation in the choice of language for education. What was known as ‘le français
tirailleur’ or ‘français
pidginisé’ was a variety that existed in all
French colonies in Africa. It was born out of the first contacts between the
colonisers and the local populations in three different situations: at job
sites, in the army, and in schools. At job sites and building sites, some
non-indigenes known as ‘les petits blancs’ or ‘les
petits colons’, relatively more in number than those of the high colonial
society, were in permanent contact with other Africans of diverse ethnic and
linguistic origins. A variety of simple and rudimentary French developed among
this group of persons. This variety was known as ‘petit-nègre’ because, according to the
ideology of the time, the variety was adapted to Black mentality. This is what Delafosse (1904), quoted in Boutin (2002) says of the
variety: Les indigènes ont beau parler notre langue, nous avons toujours beaucoup de mal à
nous faire comprendre et à les comprendre,
et comme il n’est pas naturel, puisque nous nous estimons supérieurs
à eux, que ce soit eux qui se mettent dans notre peau, c’est à nous de nous mettre dans la leur […] il faut évidemment n’employer que les formes les
plus simple des mots, mais surtout il faut n’employer que les mots
que les Noirs peuvent comprendre. According to Delafosse
(ibid), the difficulties in communication between Blacks and Whites gave birth
to this type of interlingua expression, although he thinks that it was of Black
making, because speaking standard French to the Blacks would have been a waste
of time. Delafosse (ibid): Que c’est nous qui avons inventé le ‘petit nègre’ et que si
nous parlions aux Noirs un français
correct, ils parleraient de
même. Ce raisonnement est puéril ; si nous ne voulons parler à un Noir qu’un français correct, il sera plus
d’un an avant de pouvoir
nous comprendre et quand il nous comprendra enfin, il nous répondra en petit-nègre : voilà la vérité (je
ne parle pas bien entendu
d’un Noir auquel on apprendrait
le français de façon régulière). The variety of the language talked of here, was that
used by the famous ‘tirailleurs camerounais’ who learned it during their military
training. It was equally used by all French African soldiers during the two
world wars. The variety played an important role in the spreading of the French
language in most parts of Cameroon. It should be noted that this variety of the
French language was used in schools at the beginning of the colonisation
process. Some former ex-service men were recruited as teachers in the ‘village schools’. Ambroise Queffelec (1995) in citing Amayé
(1984) points out that: Le personnel enseignant dans [les] écoles officielles
était constitués par des moniteurs improvisés provenant soit du commerce défaillant des compagnies concessionnaires,
soit du service de l’armée
[…]. C’est dans ces écoles qu’on comptait essentiellement les gens parlant
le français ‘petit-nègre’
(le moi y’en a dit). Some examples to illustrate this variety include: 1)
Son la maison (sa maison) 2)
Ça y en a mon la route (c’est ma
route) 3)
Moi y en a maladie (je suis malade) 4)
Moi y’a pati (je suis
parti) 5)
Mon camarade son fusil (le fusil de mon camarade)
etc. Two reasons favoured this linguistic policy in the
colonies; first, in the early days of colonisation, education was in the hands
of Catholic missionaries who had inherited from the Roman Empire a strong
tendency toward linguistic and cultural centrism. This inclination, coupled
with France’s strong propensity for cultural imperialism, led to schooling that
was virtually entire in French and to the resulting devaluation of African
languages. Around the 20th century, missionary influence waned rapidly and the French government assumed responsibility for
colonial education. Echoing
earlier directives, the decree of 10 May 1924 clearly stated: “Article 64: Le français est seul en
usage dans les écoles. Il est interdit
aux maîtres de se servir avec leurs
élèves des idiomes du pays”.
But beyond this prohibition was the intimidating ban imposed on the
students themselves by means of the infamous system known as ‘le symbole’:
an object which was circulated from pupil to pupil as each was caught by his
mate speaking his native tongue. At the end of the day, the unlucky holder of ‘le symbol’ was subjected to corporal
punishment by the teacher. Moreover, neologisms and ungrammatical French were
severely suppressed. 5.
EDUCATIONAL
POLICY AFTER THE BRAZZAVILLE CONFERENCE OF 1944
The Brazzaville conference which focused on the
relative autonomy of the colonies in relation to their economy with a
possibility of self-determination by the African populations, was very conservative
on what concerned the linguistic aspect (Queffelec,
1995). The ministerial Order of 22nd August 1945 stipulated that,
“elementary primary education which has as its essential objective to rule and
accelerate the evolution of the African populations, is done only in the French
language”. It was at this moment that stickers were placed on all doors in
African schools with the famous, “It is forbidden to speak the dialect within
the school campus”. Henceforth, any pupil who was caught speaking any language
other than French had to carry round their neck the famous ‘symbol’. The word ‘dialect’ as used on ‘the symbol’ was
intentional. The colonisers didn’t consider African
languages as languages per se. African languages were considered inferior and
so, could not be given the status of ‘a language’ as was the case with the
French language. The institution of ‘the symbol’ had as immediate
consequence the delimitation of two distinct spaces: the school campus which
was reserved for the French language and the out-of-school space reserved for
the other languages. ‘The symbol’ was a real nightmare for the African pupil.
Fredric Michelman (1995) in comparing French and
British colonial language policies, states Frantz Fanon’s position in Black Skin, White Masks. Fanon analyses
the almost pathological response of educated West Indians vis-à-vis the French
language: anything less than pure Parisian (such as the use of Creole or a West
Indian accent) relegates the speaker to a less human category. In the same
vein, Pauline Hountondji wrote in Présence Africaine: “The linguistic behaviour of
the African, when expressing himself in French, has all the characteristics of
a neurosis”. He describes this neurosis obsession with the search for
linguistic perfection in French as contributing to the intellectual’s
increasingly impoverished rapport with his native language. As a corollary to
the draconian imposition of French in the schools, there was thus a
simultaneous devaluation of African ‘dialects’ (a ‘dialect’ presumably being
something less than a ‘language’), justified in part by the spurious theory of
superior and inferior languages. In these circumstances, it is not at all
surprising that no encouragement was given by the French government to the
transcription and use of African languages in its colonies. The Ivorian novelist, Bernard Dadié
(2003), who passed on in March 2019 at the age of 103, had this to say about
the protagonist in his novel, Climbié, who
was a victim of ‘the symbol’: Climbié marche, la tête pleine d’idées, cherchant de se débarrasser au plus tôt de ce petit cube, si lourd parce qu’il
est le symbole même de l’enseignement dispensé. Le symbole ! Vous ne savez pas ce que c’est !
Vous en avez
de la chance. C’est un cauchemar ! Il empêche de rire, de vivre dans l’école, car toujours on pense à lui. On ne cherche, on ne guette que le porteur du symbole. Où est-il ? N’est-il pas chez celui-là ?
Cher cet autre ? Le symbole semble être sous le pagne, dans la poche de chaque élève. L’on se regarde avec des yeux soupçonneux. Le symbole a empoisonné le milieu, vicié l’air, gelé les cœurs !
[…] A cause de ce symbole, c’était pour les élèves un vif plaisir de s’éloigner de l’école dès que la sortie était sonnée. (115 – 116). ‘The symbol’ was an inhibited factor for generations
of young Africans. It was equally a handicap on the psycho-pedagogic plan. From
the moment of the decision to use ‘the symbol’, the linguistic competence of
the African child who got to school, was compared to that of a French child who
already had some mastery of the French language. The colonisers failed to
understand that the African child had to learn the language skills from
scratch: reading, writing, and especially formulating his thought in French.
Consequently, the African child who could neither understand nor reason in
French, could only learn by mechanically reciting words and sentences that
represented notions he didn’t understand or thought
of. More so, the form of the language the child learned was mainly the written form
and especially the descriptive aspects of literary texts. This pedagogical
practice gave birth to a variety of the French language in Cameroon known as ‘français académique’ or ‘français des scolarisés’ which later became the variety used by the
educated class. Fredric Michelman (ibid.)
opines that although the assimilationist principle of making of all Africans
French cultural clones persisted as an ideal throughout the colonial period, in
practice it was only seriously applied in education after World War II. During
the first half of the 20th century, this approach was modified by
the principle of ‘adaptation’ whereby a very limited number of African children
were exposed to a simplified curriculum designed to train a small cadre of
loyal, mainly low-level subordinates to assist the colonial administration.
Very few were able to obtain more standard university-level degrees and it is
from their ranks and from those of the immediate post-World War II University
graduating classes that most of the contemporary francophone writers emerged. 6.
THE
FRENCH LANGUAGE IN POST-INDEPENDENT CAMEROON
French Cameroon got its independence on 1st
January 1960 and united with the British Southern Cameroon on 1st
October 1961 to form the Federal Republic of Cameroon. The constitution of the
young state, in its article 1 (3) proclaimed French and English as the official
languages. The new authorities, who took control after the colonialists,
assigned two functions to the languages: the consolidation of national unity
and integration, and the development of the country with opening to the rest of
the world. The first president of the country, Amadou
Ahidjo had love for French culture and the French language. To him, the
language was politically useful. This was equally the case with other
francophone presidents like Omar Bongo of Gabon and Félix Houphouet-Boigny of
Côte d’Ivoire. Talking of the
latter, Bouin (ibid. p.46) writes: Son raisonnement comme son style sont africains, avec une constant à la situation de l’énonciation,
et l’on admire, dans ses discours, non les belles tournures et les mots rares, car ils sont absents, mais la manier africaine d’utiliser la langue, par ailleurs
exemple de fautes et d’écarts. Like President Houphouet and
many other presidents of newly independent French African countries, President
Ahidjo’s French language was void of literary, poetic
and spiritual aspects of French culture. Even if he wasn’t
a partisan of the teaching of home languages in schools, we nevertheless, do
not find degrading judgement of this in his speech. Ahidjo gave the French
language an essentially practical role. It may not be an exaggeration to say
that this importance given to the language by Ahidjo (and all other Francophone
Cameroonians of the political class), influenced the attitude of other
Francophone Cameroonians vis-à-vis the French language. What is certain is
that, to speak the ‘French of France’ in countries like Côte d’Ivoire and
Cameroon has never known the same enthusiasm as in some Francophone African countries
like Senegal, Gabon or Congo Brazzaville (Kouadio N’Guessan, 2008). During independence, Cameroon was linguistically characterised by a
situation of diglossia, a situation which still
prevails today: diglossia between the French
language, which Lafage (2003) calls ‘the upper
variety’ used in the administration, in schools, by the judiciary, etc. and
underestimated home languages assimilated to ‘the lower variety’ (used within
family circles, in markets, in daily activities, etc.), diglossia
between the ‘French of the elite’ closer to the norms of the coloniser, and
‘Pidgin French’, a pidginised variety spoken by a growing urban majority with
less or no education. Independence brought with it the democratisation of
education with the creation of schools, colleges, vocational institutions
and the Federal University of Cameroon in 1962. Between 1960 and 2016, the
growth rate in the ‘Francophone’ population has been tremendous. It went from
1.9 % to 2.7 % in 2016. In spite of this growth, the
success rate in schools dropped in primary and secondary schools. While the use
of the French language was increasing, its quality was dropping. Its
acquisition was not exclusively done only in schools, which were losing their
prestige and quality. Massive rural exodus by young Cameroonians in search of
better livelihood, brought about intermingling in the major cities which
favoured the spread of the local variety of the French language in a country
with no dominant home language. Today, all social classes are influenced by the French
language. Public servants like intellectuals communicate in the language.
Labourers, market dwellers, etc. who form the majority of
the urban proletariat are obliged to communicate among themselves and with
their employers in a language they do not very well master. This is equally the
case with dropouts and street children who, in their daily interaction, use the
French language. Depending on the mode of acquisition or appropriation of the
language, the length of exposure of the learner to the standard form, there are
three varieties of the language which correspond to three social strata. 7.
VARIETIES
OF THE FRENCH LANGUAGE IN CAMEROON
The French language spoken in Cameroon has always been
considered a continuum comprising of diverse varieties made up of the basilectal (remote variety), the mesolectal (creole
continuum) and the acrolectal (standard variety). Even if the use of the language has reduced
the barrier between the different varieties, it could, for sociolinguistic
analysis, still be classified under two main varieties: Cameroon popular French
(the social variety), and the jargon of youths. The French language in Cameroon can today be
considered a vehicular language. Mendo Zé (1992) states that Cameroon home languages play an
important role in the variety of the French language used by Cameroonians.
These languages influence communication among Cameroonians and their linguistic
behaviours. From an internal point of view, the French language in Cameroon has
developed linguistic varieties which identify its speakers. We thus have what
can be termed regional Cameroon French depending on a number
of factors. 7.1. CAMEROON POPULAR FRENCH (CPF) OR THE SOCIAL VARIETY
Cameroon
popular French was born out of the ‘petit nègre’
earlier mentioned in our study. It started in the capital city, Yaoundé and
gradually spread to other parts of the country in the early years after
independence. Early researchers like Mendo Zé (1992), Biloa (2003), Wamba and Noumsi (2003) who
worked in this domain, arrived at the conclusion that the variety is in
progress. Joachim Oelsner (2000) in his introduction
in Le tour du Cameroun, writes that
the phonology of Cameroonian home languages interfere
with three colonial languages that have existed in the country, that is,
English, French and German. He
holds that, “La transcription de tout ce que l’on pourrait
appeler les réalités africaines comme les noms des villes et villages, les ethnies et tribus avec leurs langues ou
leurs rites, mais leurs noms de personne
[…] n’est pas homogène et donne souvent l’impression
d’un babel linguistique. Ainsi,
pour le même nom existent toujours
plusieurs versions. Quelques
exemples pour les noms de personnes: Folefa, Folifack, ou Fouelefack;
Tsafac, Tchafack, Tsofack ;
Ondoua, Ondua, Ondou, etc. Wamba et al.
(2003) think that when a foreign language (in this case, the French language)
imposes itself as a second language to one or more home languages, the second
language is enriched by borrowing. In this light, the onomastic (in general) or
the anthroponomy will constitute lexical or terminological interference, giving
that names of persons function in the second language as borrowings from the
source language. Queffelec (1998:358) observes that
such borrowings are generally graphics (graphic of the item in the source
language and the system of the transcription of the second language). Such
hybridity is at the origin of the plethora of varieties in the orthography of
these borrowings. The multiplicity of orthography is sometimes at the origin of
errors and can create linguistic insecurity for the L2 user who does not master
the L1 code and equally does not know which reading system should be adopted. These observations find their pertinence in the
existence, in Cameroon popular French, of the different forms in orthography
and articulations of borrowed terms such as: Fo/Fo’o; Essingan/Essigang; Laakam/Lakam. Wamba et al. (ibid) say
that, in like manner, the language of advertisement in Cameroon is
linguistically and sociolinguistically diverse. The language
contains other aspects of linguistic variation, especially through the
phenomenon of borrowing. As B. Tsofack (2002)
observes: The semiology of borrowing in advertisement in
Cameroon reveals two types of situations: the search for the right word to fill
the lexical and cultural gap, and the lexical creation itself. In the latter
case, the borrowings are seen as interferences from
the linguistic system of the mother-tongue. The fact that this social variety is in constant
progress simply means that it is not a creole but a variety in the marking
which is used till date by both educated and less educated Cameroonians. The
following examples demonstrate the characteristics of the variety: On the morpho-syntactic plan, we have the following
examples: 1) Determinants
are most often dropped. ·
Tu vas prendre bus? (Tu vas prendre le bus?) ·
On peut prendre boisson?
(Pouvons-nous prendre une boisson?) ·
Tu veux ballon?
(Veux-tu un
ballon?) 2) A peculiar
way of using personal pronouns ·
Il les a donné des
places (Il leur a donné des places) ·
La pluie n’a pas laissé leur (La
pluie ne les
a pas épargnés) ·
On va tuer lui (On va le tuer) 3) The
omission of some linking morphemes like prepositions ·
J’ai
jamais été école (Je n’ai jamais été
à l’école) ·
Je parti Yaoundé (Je vais à Yaoundé) 7.2. THE HYBRID VARIETY (CAMFRANGLAIS)
Camfranglais, which is a fusion
of Cameroonian languages, French and English, is a jargon which came into
existence from the early 1980s and used by youths. The reasons for the creation
of this are the same as those that have given rise to other similar jargons,
that is: wilful coded language, renaissance, group identification, etc. Camfranglais is characterised at the lexical level by
semantic changes and borrowings from the local languages. Thus, words from home languages are retained
(example: nkap ‘money’ from the Bamileke,
‘mola’ from the Bakweri,
‘à mot’ from Beti/fang,
etc.), modified, truncated and at times associated to elements of other
languages (example: ‘Mola, je te hia mo’ friend, I like your
way of doing things). At times, words are derived or composed with different
metaphorical or metonymical meanings. We can cite the following: At the morpho-syntactic level: 1) The
introduction of new invariable verb forms borrowed from English and the home
languages. ‘Je te hia mo’ (I like your ways). 2) The non-respect
of number and gender. At times, gender is not defined: ‘ma ngo or mon ngo’, (ma petite amie). The following examples illustrate the use of this
variety by youths in their daily interactions: Jean de Dieu Momo passe
sur l’arène et il sabote Benjo Zébazé
après ça le kick boxing a biging
entre eux, après ça c’était Cabral Libih qui était invité dans la grande interview, après son passage mollah
son fan club voulait tuer kelkun avec le boucan. Après il voulait go take général. ·
Jean de
Dieu Momo était l’invité à l’émission, l’Arène où il s’est
attaqué à Benjo Zebazé avant qu’une
bagarre n’éclate entre eux. Après le passage de Cabral Libih
à l’émission, Grande Interview, ses
fans se sont réjouirent de
son passage. Après quoi, il est allé
emprunter le car de l’agence
« Général Express». ·
On a seloman compris le feu à Bafoussam chez
son agence, les gars étaient
content juska. Il y’a eu incendie
à l’agence de Bafoussam, ce qui a fait réjouirent les gens. ·
Il y’a un gars ki a montré un meeting de Joshua
au nord. Un
garçon a montré les images du meeting du candidat Joshua Osih tenu dans la région du nord. ·
Oui,
Joshua est go faire sa tournée là-bas
au nord comme Kamto, un perika a filmé ça il
nous a send, moi en moins de 15min, les gars ont lap
plus de 200 fois. Comme le
candidat Kamto, Joshua Osih a éffectué une tournée dans la région du nord qui a été filmé par un jeune qui nous a envoyé les images, ce qui a fait réagir plus de 200 personnes. ·
Vrai vrai la comparaison entre lui et Kamto fesait
lap comme il avait d’abord nack
sa poitrine ke na yi be leader for opposition
for dis pays. La comparaison entre lui et Kamto est intéressante
étant donné qu’il se considère le leader de l’opposition. ·
Eh ! j’allais oublier Garga Haman ki a chassé Cathy Toulou du plateau. Il a dit hoha kel n’est
pas une invitée comme lui kel
sort sinon il sort en solo. Eh ! J’allais oublier Garga Haman qui a fait partir
Cathy Toulou du plateau. Il a dit
qu’elle n’était pas une invitée et que si elle ne sortait
par, lui (Garga) devait s’en aller.
·
Maintenant Bertold nous a démontré ke Fobassou la ke l’armée a
arrêté était die depuis comme le mbom ki avait
aussi win l’eman sans write
là. Bertold nous a démontré que Fobassou qui a été arrêté par l’armée était bien longtemps décédé, comme c’était le cas avec le candidat qui avait était déclaré
admis à l’Enam sans n’avoir
présenté le concours. ·
Le MRC a zappe les
gars sur son alliance avec l’opposition et insiste ke c’est
lui ki doit
tirer le penalty du 7/10/2018. Le MRC a
déjoué les gens en ce qui concerne la formation d’une alliance avec les autres partis de l’opposition et insiste que ce son candidat qui devrait se présenter à la présidentielle. ·
La suite va se poursuivre dans les différents débats du dimanche canal presse, vision 4, STV, équinoxe, j’oublie koi? La suite va se poursuivre
dans les différents débats
du dimanche, canal presse,
vison 4, STV, équinoxe et j’en
passe. The use of this variety by youths can
be seen as a sort of linguistic revolution, an identification of the
‘self’. The variety differentiates its users from ‘elitist French’ users, the
French of the high society. With the passing of time, the main groups that
voluntarily used a ‘high variety’ of the French language to ‘show-off and
to demarcate themselves from the rest of the society’ are now limited. Today,
there is a rapprochement between the mesolectal and the acrolectal varieties,
and an assimilation of some traits of the basilectal
variety. There is thus some sort of an indigenous form of the language in
Cameroon which turns to be uniformalised. 7.3. THE USE OF SHORT MESSAGE SERVICE (SMS)
Another specificity of the hybrid variety is the manner in which younger Cameroonians communicate with the
use of short message service (SMS). In a study entitled, ‘les SMS tuent la langue française’,
Mawel Arnaud (2018) concludes thus: La langue française a mal. Elle est victime du mauvais usage qui menace de lui ‘tordre le cou’. Les personnes qui l’emploient pour communiquer par Short Message Service (SMS) sont à l’origine de sa souffrance. Elles se sont résolues
à lui amputer ce qu’elle a d’essentiel
pour échanger rapidement
par écrit et à moindre coût. This infection of the French language in Cameroon is
the result of aspects such as mode, the offhand manner of the writer, economy
of airtime, the encoding of messages, the mixture of the French language with
the English language and other home languages, etc. If the elderly class of
Cameroonians wrote the French language with seriousness and rigour, today the
younger generation takes lightly the use of the language, especially in writing
SMS, a communication means brought about with the advent of ICTs and other
electronic means of communication. Most often, 18 year old
Stéphane Nkot uses SMS. When interviewed, he had this to say, “j’utilise plus les SMS que les appels
ou les réseaux sociaux pour communiquer. Chaque mois, j’active
un forfait des SMS pour une
durée de 30 jours et dès lors, j’écris sans cesse". With the use of this atypical style of writing,
youths are those who do more harm to the language. They completely ignore the
rules of grammar, orthography, morphology and syntax.
Grammatical agreement does not exist, while the orthography of words has
changed. Words and expressions, even the shortest ones, are abbreviated or
transformed into alphanumerical codes. We can cite the following examples: Maa c mw ki tè call (Maman c’est moi
qui t’appelle) ·
7 bel fi è genti g laim (Cette belle fille est gentille, je l’aime) ·
Salut, sa va bien ? (Salut, est-ce que ça va ?) ·
On ce conne pas vremt. (On ne se connait
pas vraiment) ·
Jaimere
faire conaisance avec toi. (J’aimerais faire
ta connaissance) ·
On est otografiquem’t pas compatible. (Nous ne sommes pas
amis) Writing in this manner, the number of words are reduced, as well as the number of pages of a message. The writer looks at the immediate gain.
Stéphane holds that, “pour quelqu’un qui paie la page du SMS
à 50 FCFA, il fait des économies”.
Unfortunately, the practice has negative effects. It
affects the writing of pupils and students in schools. Their essays are full of
both grammatical and orthographic errors. It equally affects their vocabulary.
For Berthe Ngo Moga, a French language teacher: C’est un sacrilège;
malgré notre dévouement au
travail, les SMS diluent les connaissances des élèves. Ils ne respectent aucune règle. Lorsqu’on les lit, on a l’impression qu’ils ont créé une
autre langue intermédiaire
à la langue française. These consequences are equally noticed in the speech
of pupils and students. Whether spoken or written, the French language has lost
its essence, especially with the suppression of dictation at the secondary
level for the past ten years and the introduction of other codes like Spanish,
German, Mandarine and home languages into the
curriculum. In 1983, Susanne Lafage
carried out a similar study in Côte d’Ivoire and found out that 65.67% of
Ivorian university students were favourable to the use of what they consider as
Ivorian popular French (français populaire ivorien, FPI) which is the equivalence of Cameroon
Popular French (CPF). This tendency cuts across most, if not, all black French
African countries. According to the target samples in Lafage’s
study, FPI is preferred by most Ivoirians because the variety does not only
bridge social barriers, it equally enables greater comprehension among
multi-ethnic and multilingual populations. One of the students in Lafage’s study opines: C’est le français du peuple. C’est celui
qui réellement nous identifie
et brise les barrières tribales et les particularismes.
Ce français met le ministre
au niveau du manœuvre et
tout le monde le comprend sans même
l’apprendre. But when one considers the question of the emergence
of an indigenous variety of the French language, and especially that of its
valorisation, opinions differ. Most Cameroonians think that there is an
indigenous variety which has led to terms such as ‘le français camerounais’
which is different from ‘le français gabonais’, ‘le français tchadien’ or ‘le français ivorien’. Boutin
(2002: 108) reports the frustration of what a teacher calls,
‘le manque de liberté
dans l’espace francophone’. The latter states, “il faut accepter que la langue se tropicalise […], la langue est un
être vivant”. This tropicalisation
of the French language has created a contrast between ‘le français camerounais’ and what can be considered as purely
academic French, as this other teacher interviewed by Boutin (2002) writes, “Il y a un français
[….] qui n’est peut-être
pas encore entériné par les normes
académiques et universitaires
mais qui permet aux gens de
communiquer, et c’est ça le plus important”. According to another French language teacher, what is
known as ‘le français
camerounais’, has its grammatical rules which
might not have been formalised but which has a structure and its logic: if this
logic is not respected, then one is not speaking ‘the French’. 8.
CONCLUSION
From our
analysis, it is clear that there is a variety of the
French language in Cameroon which functions according to its proper norms.
Because of conflict of generations, when it comes to standard of this
indigenous variety, opinions differ. Most of those against what can be
considered a ‘new type of French language’ in Cameroon are the elderly
generations and the educated class; mostly teachers who were trained shortly
after independence. To them, standardising Cameroon French will mean taking the
risk of not being understood by other French language users. This argument is
rejected by partisans of ‘Cameroon French’, amongst them young teachers and
students. Like in Côte d’Ivoire, this class bases its argument on the attitude
of the youth vis-à-vis some of their textbooks. They prefer textbooks written
in a variety of language which is familiar to them. They complain of the gap
that is gradually developing between the French taught in schools (le français des
livres) and that which is common amongst the people (le français courant). There are teachers
who do not find any inconvenience that expressions typical of ‘français camerounais’
be used by students on condition that, the expressions “are inserted within an
acceptable syntax”. The famous Ivorian writer, Amadou
Kourouma, one of the apostles of Africanising and
adapting the colonial language, thinks that: Les africains ayant adopté le français, doivent maintenant l’adapter et le changer pour s’y retrouver à l’aise ; ils y introduisent
des mots, des expressions, une syntaxe,
un rythme nouveaux. Quand
on a des habits, on s’essaie toujours
à les coudre pour qu’ils moulent bien, c’est ce que vont faire et font déjà
les Africains du français
(qtd. in Kouadio 2005: 177). Without being original, the French language in
Cameroon has some exemplary specificities. At the beginning it was a
colonial-imperialist language, thus a language of the oppressor. With time, and
with socio-political realities, it became a vehicular language shared by
Cameroonians. Many factors were in favour of this change: the absence of a
common language used by Cameroonians at the eve of independence permitted the
infiltration of the French language into the habits of the social groups that
were in contact with Europeans: labourers, house-maids, soldiers, employees,
neo-Christians, etc. Pre and post-colonial schools
helped the spread of the language which today is used, without any complex, by
many Cameroonians, though they use varieties that are more or less far-off from
the ‘main stream’ French. Henceforth, the French language should be considered
a Cameroonian language. SOURCES OF FUNDING
None. CONFLICT OF INTEREST
None. ACKNOWLEDGMENT
None. REFERENCES
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