Cameroon: Nah So!

Time for another Cameroon story, eh?

I lived and worked in the English-speaking western part of the country, but that description isn't perfectly true. The official language was English, but everyone who grew up in a village spoke his or her tribal language first, and there were over 200 of these around the country. And the real lingua franca of western Cameroon was Pidgin.

The history is interesting, dating back hundreds of years. Traders who went from port to port around Africa and Asia couldn't learn each local tribal language to do business, so a simplified version of English developed for trading purposes. It incorporated words from the local languages, and from other European colonial languages. Cameroon Pidgin is similar (but not identical) to Nigerian Pidgin, but apparently pretty different from, say, Malaysian Pidgin.

So in western Cameroon kids grow up fluent in their own tribal language and in Pidgin, and then they have to learn English starting in grade school. If they stay in school they also learn French starting in 7th grade ("Form 1"). A smart high school kid in my town of Mamfe would think nothing of speaking French with his French teacher, in English later with someone else, walking home chatting with his friends in Pidgin, and then talking with his grandmother at home in the local language, Kenyang. Imagine!

I shouldn't overstate the average Mamfe kid's French ability, though. The smaller English-speaking West is dominated politically and economically by the larger French-speaking East, and there is plenty of resentment over this. More than a few Anglophones wear their ignorance of French as a badge of pride -- it wouldn't shock me if the same were true in Toronto or Edmonton...

Back to Pidgin: We received some instruction in the language during our model-school teacher training -- just a few hours each week, to learn some of the basics. We certainly could have gotten by without it, but it's kinda fun, and useful in the many places you might not be dealing with formally educated folks, like the market or the bar. It's also a cultural touchstone, so being able to speak some Pidgin shows an effort at fitting in. That's especially true if you can use the right proverb or saying at the right time.

Some Pidgin tidbits:

• Many common words are straight from English: house, book, foot, eye, etc.
• Some are clearly from English, but pronounced or used a little differently: "waka" for walk, "tree" for three, "beeya" for beer, "dis" for this, "ee" for he, him, it, and his. A funeral wake is called a "cry-die".
• Others are from various sources, including some tribal languages somewhere: "mimbo" means alcohol, "chop" means eat or food, "nyanga" is decoration, "Ashyia" is Sorry, "kombi" is friend, and "biabia" is hair.
• The future tense is made by putting "go" before the verb, while the past tense uses "bin" or "dun".
• "Fo" seems to be short for "for", but it's the main preposition used. "Ah de go fo mocket" means I'm going to the market.

We Peace Corps types showed a range of skill levels with Pidgin, as you'd expect. Early on someone (I forget who) tried to barter for something in the Bamenda market in Pidgin, and the woman vendor told him "Ah no de heeya dat kine French tok" -- I don't speak French...

As for me, I got it, but I didn't really embrace it like I did French. Teachers were generally careful to only speak English to students, as a matter of educational pride, but I felt free (as an outsider) to mix a little Pidgin in for fun in the classroom. Instead of always using "That's right!" as an affirmative to a question, sometimes I'd say "Nah so!" with a smile, and get a laugh from everyone.

I get a little nostalgic from time to time about Cameroon, as you can tell. Let's just say "Ee bin be some obah-long time wey ah neba chop fufu an eru", and leave it at that...

Pat