Region 3 | Sub-Saharan Africa | Fund Drive
2014
After a lengthy flight, the LINGUIST List
crew is excited to touch down in Yaoundé,
Cameroon. We can’t wait to get out and
stretch our legs.
From here, we’ll be exploring Sub-Saharan
Africa, home to the world’s largest language
family, the world’s largest phonemic
inventory, and (probably!) the world’s first
human languages. We’re looking forward to
meeting local linguists, visiting linguistic
institutions, and learning how to say “more
palm wine, please!” in a variety of
languages.
We start our whirlwind tour by exploring
Cameroon. With a staggering 281 living
languages from 4 language families
(Afroasiatic, Niger-Congo, Nilo-Saharan, and
Indo-European), Cameroon is a hotspot of
linguistic diversity. In fact, among African
countries, it’s second only to its neighbor
Nigeria (with an estimated 516 living
languages) in number of languages. While
Cameroon’s official languages are English and
French, only a fraction of the population are
actually fluent French speakers, and even
fewer are English speakers. Other widely
spoken lingua francae include Fulfulde and
Cameroon Pidgin English, and most people
speak one or more local languages.
At the University of Buea, we notice some
interesting signage concerning Pidgin, and
many of us are now itching to do some field
research on linguistic prestige and language
policy.
We take some time to see the sights in
Yaoundé, where in any given marketplace, we
overhear animated conversations in dozens of
languages. The sociolinguists among us are
entranced by the rapid-fire code-switching
and had to be dragged away before they
started to formulate grant proposals to study
it.
We move on and stop by the ANACLAC (National
Association of Cameroonian Language
Committees) headquarters. ANACLAC is an NGO
that promotes education and literacy in
Cameroonian languages and focuses especially
on creating teaching materials in children’s
mother tongues. With hundreds of languages to
work with, ANACLAC’s member organizations
have a challenging mission, but an important
one.
From Yaoundé, we head northwest to the Lower
Fungom region, one of the world’s most
densely-packed areas of language diversity.
Seven languages (or small language clusters)
are spoken in thirteen villages in a 10 km by
10 km area. It is astonishing to be able to
walk two kilometers and find ourselves in a
town with a completely different language; we
are even more astonished by, and frankly a
little jealous of, the hyperpolyglots of
Lower Fungom. Many inhabitants know a large
number of their neighboring languages, as
well as Pidgin English. We even meet a man
who claims to speak seventeen languages,
which isn’t unheard of in Cameroon!
After saying our goodbyes in Lower Fungom, we
head down to the the University of Buea, site
of the most recent World Congress of African
Linguistics and home to a thriving
linguistics department. Having browsed the
linguistics section of the library, we decide
to take a hard-earned break from our madcap
journey. After watching the sun set over
Mount Cameroon, we down a few local beers,
eat some tasty fried fish, and dance the
night away (like most college towns, Buea has
great nightclubs). Finally, exhausted but
delighted, we can make our way back to our
(t)rusty airplane.
Stay tuned for the featured linguists for
this region and as always, remember to donate
to support your favorite linguistic
subfield!
https://linguistlist.org/donation/donate/donate1.cfm