Camfranglais: A glossary of common words, phrases and usages

Camfranglais: A glossary of common words, phrases and usages

Jean-Paul Kouega
University of Yaounde I

Camfranglais is a composite language variant, a type of pidgin that blends in the same speech act linguistic elements drawn first from French and secondly from English, Pidgin English, widespread Cameroonian languages, and other European languages like Latin and Spanish. It is used by secondary school pupils to discuss, among themselves to the exclusion of non-members, such issues as food, drinks, money, sex, physical look and the like. This speech form has been in use in Cameroon for barely three decades.

Though a very young language variant, it is as widespread as Fulfulde that has been used in the northern area of the country since the 15th century, as Pidgin English that has developed in the south-western areas since the 16th century and as Beti, a language group whose dialects have been natively spoken in the south-eastern areas. The present work is divided into two parts. Part One focuses first on the sociolinguistic contexts in which Camfranglais evolved and then on the linguistic features of this speech form. Part Two is a glossary which provides a lexical inventory of the most frequent Camfranglais terms used within the last decade.

ISBN 9783862884513. LINCOM Studies in Pidgin and Creole Languages 13. 323pp. 2013.