Cameroon Pidgin English (Kamtok): phonology

“Kamtok” is one of the labels used to refer to a pidginized variety of English used in parts of Cameroon. It is also referred to as “Cameroon Pidgin English” or simply as “Pidgin English”. Earlier studies (Dwyer, 1966; Schneider, 1966) have used the label “West African Pidgin English” to include other pidginized varieties of English spoken along the west coast of Africa, particularly in Nigeria, Sierra Leone and Liberia. “Kamtok” is mutually intelligible with these other varieties to a large extent but has developed its own characteristic features over the years.

The history of Kamtok is closely linked to that of contacts between Europe and the coasts of West and Central Africa. Contact between Europe and West and Central Africa was first made in the fifteenth century when the Portuguese, under Henry the Navigator, decided to explore this part of the African continent. Contact with the coast of Cameroon was made shortly after 1472 when a Portuguese expedition, led by a certain Fernando Gomes, reached Fernando Pô, an island off the coast of Cameroon which is part of Equatorial Guinea today. It is reported (Schneider 1966) that this contact with the coastal regions of West and Central Africa first gave rise to various Portuguese-based pidgins and creoles that spread from Sâo Tomê, off the coast of Central Africa, to the Cape Verde islands in the west. Bouchaud (1952) confirms the use, along the coast of Cameroon in the sixteenth century, of a Portuguese-based language for commercial transactions between Portuguese traders and natives of the area.

The exact manner in which an English-based Pidgin first came about in this region remains uncertain. What is known is that Portuguese influence in the region started dwindling by the end of the sixteenth century. The Dutch began to replace the Portuguese at the beginning of the seventeenth century. Dutch influence was relatively short-lived, however, and made no real impact on the linguistic situation left behind by the Portuguese. The Dutch were soon replaced by the British, whose influence in the region began to be felt as early as 1618 when a trade monopoly was granted to a British firm ‘the Governor and Company of Adventures of London Trading to Gynney and Binney’. Later, in 1672, the Royal African Company succeeded to the monopoly and traded till 1712 (Mbassi-Manga 1973). British influence is thus seen to have spread to many locations along the coast of West and Central Africa in the eighteenth century. Closer contact between the British and inhabitants of the area was enhanced by the introduction of the “factory” and “trust” systems of trade and by the active part taken by the British in the slave trade (Dike 1956).

The spread of British influence and the establishment of closer contact between the British and the inhabitants of these coastal regions led to the formation of an English-based pidgin, which eventually replaced the Pidgin Portuguese that had been used in the area for over two centuries. The exact manner in which the shift from Pidgin Portuguese to Pidgin English took place is a matter of debate. Relexification has been suggested, but it is more likely that Pidgin Portuguese existed side by side with a more recently formed Pidgin English until the latter gradually replaced the former. In support of the second hypothesis, Schneider (1966), citing early Dutch accounts and other scattered pieces of historical information, places the beginning of the development of an English–based pidgin in the seventeenth century.

One thing seems fairly certain: by the end of the eighteenth century, Pidgin English was firmly established throughout the West African coast. Schneider (1966) cites sources which confirm that an Efik slave-trading chief of the coastal region of what is today Nigeria kept a diary in Pidgin English which was described as “a jargon which was mainly English in vocabulary although the constructions were often modelled on those of Ibibio” (a local language). A series of historical events led to the further development of what has come to be known today in Cameroon as Pidgin English or Kamtok. First, the abolition of the slave trade led to the resettlement, early in the nineteenth century, of freed slaves in three communities along the coast of West Africa: in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Fernando Pô. Within each of these communities, Pidgin English was the principal medium of communication, as this was the only language the slaves had in common. Meanwhile, contacts between British explorers and merchants and inhabitants of the coastal region of Cameroon continued to intensify. Bouchaud (1952) mentions regular visits to the area in 1800 by vessels of the Congo District Association, a British explorers’ association. He also mentions an earlier individual initiative by a British merchant, Henry King, whose boats also visited Cameroon regularly. His sons, Richard and William King, were later to found a firm that continues to prosper today and bears the name R. and W. King. Missionaries soon followed the explorers and merchants and helped to spread the new language further.

Missionaries from the Baptist Missionary Society of London and the Jericho Baptist Mission in Jamaica arrived and settled in Clarence, Fernando Pô in 1841 (Keller, Schnellback and Brütsch 1961). After making contacts with the Cameroon mainland, they succeeded in founding Christian communities at Bimbia in 1844 and Douala in 1854. In 1845, meanwhile, Alfred Saker arrived in Fernando Pô and when, in 1858, the Spanish authorities there declared the Protestant religion illegal on the island, Saker and his group moved to the Cameroon mainland and founded a mission station in Victoria. Freed slaves were among the first lay members of these early Christian communities. They spoke Pidgin English. From Victoria, today renamed “Limbe”, and Douala, the new language was going to spread gradually to parts of the Cameroon hinterland, aided by commerce, missionary activity and colonial rule.

Taking advantage of British procrastination, the Germans annexed Cameroon in 1884. But German rule over Cameroon was quite short-lived. It ended by the end of World War I when under the terms of the Treaty of Versailles signed in 1919, Cameroon was placed by the League of Nations under the trusteeship of France and Britain. Under German rule, Pidgin English continued to thrive in spite of German hostility. The creation of plantations along the coastal area by the Germans drew workers from various parts of the territory where different languages were spoken. Brought together in these plantations, the workers who did not share an indigenous language quickly learned Pidgin English, which they used while on the plantations and eventually took back to their areas of origin in the hinterland. Thus the language continued to develop and spread.

After World War II, Cameroon was maintained as a trust territory under the French and the British. Each colonial power set up a system of administration and opened schools in which the colonial language was the medium of communication and instruction. But Pidgin English was already so firmly implanted that it continued to be used even in parts of the territory that had come under French colonial rule. In the part of the country under British trusteeship, Pidgin English developed rapidly alongside English with which it shared close ties which, over the years, have come to influence its phonology and vocabulary. Where French was the colonial language, Pidgin English spread was slowed down, but the language largely survived, borrowing occasionally from French to complement its vocabulary and cope with new situations. This historical and linguistic divide at the level of the colonial language has today given rise to two broad varieties of Kamtok: one that clearly leans towards English and borrows freely from it and one that is more conservative and borrows rather cautiously from French. These two broad varieties have been otherwise referred to as “Anglophone Pidgin English” and “Francophone Pidgin English” (Mbassi-Manga 1973).

Since the two territories re-unified in 1961 to form the Federal Republic of Cameroon, the situation of Kamtok has not changed very much as far as the influence of English or French is concerned. But there are clear indications that the language continues to spread in spite of occasional hostility from people who think that it stands in the way of a rapid mastery of ‘standard’ English by school pupils and other learners. As one of Cameroon’s languages of wider communication, Kamtok today bridges the linguistic gap among an estimated one quarter to one third of the country’s rural and particularly urban populations. The language is used intensively among the inhabitants of the so-called English-speaking provinces of the North West and South West which account for at least one fifth of Cameroon’s total population of about 15 million inhabitants. It is also fairly frequently used in most parts of the French-speaking Littoral and the West Provinces which are adjacent to the two English-speaking provinces. Outside these four (out of ten) provinces, Kamtok is found in varying extents in urban centres.

A survey conducted in the early 1980s by the Department of English at the University of Yaounde sought to describe the linguistic profile of Cameroon’s urban centres. The survey revealed the spread of Kamtok in the country. According to its findings (published in Koenig, Chia and Povey [1983]), Kamtok has spread throughout the southern half of the country. In the urban centres surveyed in the southern half of Francophone Cameroon, 30% to 60% of the people consulted claimed they knew and used the language. The number of people who claimed to know and use Kamtok in the six urban areas studied in the English-speaking provinces of the country hardly dropped below 80%.

From a fairly marginal language that grew out of contacts between European explorers, merchants and missionaries and the coastal inhabitants of Cameroon some three hundred years ago or so, Kamtok has grown to become a fully-fledged language that is put to a wide range of uses. It remains the language of buying and selling in most local markets of the regions where it is used. The sociolinguistic survey of Cameroon’s urban centres revealed for example that in Douala, Cameroon’s economic capital that is located in the French-speaking part of the country, 83% of the people interviewed used Kamtok in buying or selling in the local markets.

Kamtok also continues to be used by Christian missionaries in evangelization and liturgical services. It occurs in numerous translations of biblical texts, catechisms and Christian liturgies which constitute most of the written texts available in the language so far. These texts come in varying orthographies but each one clearly serves the purpose of its author. Kamtok occupies a prominent place in many homes in Cameroon where it shares functions with the mother tongue. The survey of urban centres revealed that in the English-speaking part of the country, up to 97% of school-age children already use Kamtok at the time they enter school. It is also the preferred language among these children when they communicate among themselves. Because it happens to be the shared language that is best mastered by school-age children, nursery school teachers tend to use it as a medium of communication and instruction until such a time that the children have acquired some mastery of English.

Kamtok’s role as a medium of interethnic communication has already been emphasized. On the basis of the linguistic survey data, it was found that Cameroon could be divided into four lingua franca zones: a Kamtok zone, a French zone, a Fulfude zone and possibly a Fang-Beti zone. The Kamtok zone was found to be matched only by the French zone in the size of its population.

Kamtok is also a language of science and technology. It is widely used by local craftsmen and technicians such as mechanics, masons, carpenters, hairdressers, seamstresses and tailors, all of whom acquire their skills thanks to the language. It is widely used for technology transfer in domains such as health, agriculture, animal husbandry and conservation. This explains why many Western volunteers who offer to serve in Cameroon have to spend time learning some rudiments of Kamtok before proceeding to meet the people among whom they intend to work. Further, Kamtok is the language of an urban mass or popular culture in Cameroon. It is widely used in popular music, theatre shows, special radio broadcasts and newspaper columns, for socialization in general and for in-group identification and differentiation in particular. The latter function is giving rise to interesting varieties of the language which remain largely unexplored.

Apart from French and English which are Cameroon’s official languages, Kamtok enters into frequent contact with several of Cameroon’s more than two hundred indigenous languages. Users bring into their Kamtok idiolects various features that derive from both the official and indigenous languages that they use in different circumstances. This has given rise to an impressive number of Kamtok accents that challenge the researcher. These horizontal forms of variation have resulted in slightly differing varieties of Kamtok that are being described after analyses conducted mostly at the phonological and lexical levels. The distinction between “Anglophone” and “Francophone” Kamtok has been established on this basis. Other regionally more restricted varieties have been identified within these two broad varieties.

The nature and extent of variation in Kamtok is also determined by the extent of the speakers’ formal education in English and exposure to situations in which English is used. Such considerations have led to the identification of so-called “educated” and “uneducated” varieties of Kamtok. The “educated” variety is said to be more elaborate in its form and richer in its choice of words many of which are borrowed directly from English in both their form, meaning and pronunciation. The “uneducated” variety is less elaborate in form and contains fewer occasional borrowings from English.

Contextual variation arises mostly from the uses to which Kamtok is put. Various uses of Kamtok have been discussed earlier but the nature and frequency of forms of variation arising from function still have to be thoroughly investigated. Some functional varieties of Kamtok have however been suggested: ecclesiastical, commercial, technical, and in-group. One such variety with an in-group function that has caught recent scholarly attention is “Camfranglais”. It is popular among school-age youth and school leavers, and, as the name suggests, comprises an intricately woven combination of expressions from indigenous languages, from French and from English. It is an evolving linguistic phenomenon that deserves to be carefully studied.

What makes variation in Kamtok so difficult to track is the fact that it remains largely unstandardized. There have been attempts to describe it by various researchers, who have focused on its grammatical and lexical features. No formal grammar or dictionary has yet come to be accepted by users as a guide that lays out norms that are worth respecting. Kamtok thus remains everybody’s language and each person uses it to the best of his/her ability and almost at leisure. This makes the task of description quite onerous. The present descriptive survey focuses on those features that are found in the speech of a cross-section of Kamtok users. As most of these users are found within or near the English-speaking provinces of Cameroon, examples will be drawn from the broad variety that tilts towards what has been termed “Anglophone” Kamtok. Care has been taken however to rid the description of features that are considered random borrowings from English, particularly those that may pose problems of intelligibility to less ‘educated’ users. Nevertheless the survey points to features that augur new trends in the development of the language.