English in Cameroon

摘要

Cameroon, a Western African coastal country, with a heritage of its history of being a previous colony of both British and French from 1916 to 1960, advocates a bilingual language policy in which English and French both serve as official languages. Due to the complex multiethnic and multilingual situation in Cameroon, multilingualism is the factual norm for the population. Besides English and French, numerous indigenous languages, especially Cameroon Pidgin English as the most significant lingual Franca of the country, are also widely used. Some demographics and sociolinguistic survey even reveal the evidence that this pidginized variety of English has occupied its indispensable position in almost all the aspects in the Cameroonian social life. Since this variety of English has long been used in the country for over 500 years, it has formed distinctive features in phonology, lexis as well as in grammar. This nativized language is now increasingly accepted as distinctive Cameroonian contributions to the world Englishes. Will the spread of this variety stand in the way of the learning "standard" English, or should this unstandardized variety be discouraged or banned in order to preserve the authenticity of English language? English as an international language teaching thus is confronted with new challenges and pondering about its future.