Cameroon Pidgin English (CPE) is an English-lexified Atlantic expanded pidgin/creole spoken in some form by an estimated 50% of Cameroon’s population, primarily in the anglophone west regions, but also in urban centres throughout the country. Primarily a spoken language, CPE enjoys a vigorous oral presence in Cameroon, and the linguistic examples illustrating this description are drawn from a spoken corpus consisting of a range of text types, including oral narratives, radio broadcasts and spontaneous conversation. The authors’ typologically-framed investigation of the features of the language, from its phonetics, phonology and lexicon to its syntax and discourse structure, allows the reader a clear view of the linguistic character of CPE, offering a comprehensive description of the language that will be of interest to creolists as well as linguists interested in African languages, contact linguistics and comparative linguistics.

This first published full-scale study of the Ghanaian variety of West African Pidgin English (GhaPE) makes extensive use of hitherto neglected historical material and provides a synchronic account of GhaPE's structure and sociolinguistics. Special focus is on the differences between GhaPE and other West African Pidgins, in particular the development of, and interrelations between, the different varieties of restructured English in West Africa, from Sierra Leone to Cameroon. This monograph further includes an overview of the history of Afro-European contact languages in Lower Guinea with special emphasis on the Gold Coast; an outline of the settlement of Freetown, Sierra Leone, with a description of how and when the transplantation of Sierra Leonean Krio to other West African countries took place; an analysis of the linguistic evidence for the origin, development, and spread of restructured Englishes on the Lower Guinea Coast; an account of the different varieties of GhaPE and their sociolinguistic status in the contemporary linguistic ecology of Ghana; as well as a comprehensive structural description of the “uneducated” variety of GhaPE. The book is accompanied by a CD-ROM which contains illustrative material such as spoken GhaPE and photographs.

Pidgin English is the chief medium of communication for the great majority of Cameroonians. It sustains a world view, culture and way of life. Pidgin embodies concepts that would at best be partially expressed in formal English. A critical understanding of Pidgin English requires not only a thorough grasp of the socio-cultural matrix from which the words and expressions originate but also an immersion in an Afro-centric worldview. Majunga Tok: Poems in Pidgin English is the poet's attempt at capturing these speech patterns of ordinary Cameroonians in written form. Pidgin English, also called broken English, is a lingua franca spoken not only in Cameroon but also in many West African countries, including Nigeria, Ghana, Sierra Leone and Liberia amonst others. This poetry anthology is inspired by the poet's desire to salvage a language that has been subjected to multiple forms of denigration because it is oral. In Cameroon, for instance, Pidgin English has been the target of myriad attacks from self-styled linguistic purists who claim that Pidgin is a bastardized variant of Standard English and, therefore, should not be allowed to thrive. The controversy and denigration directed at Amos Tutuola and his Pidgin English creative genius are vivid examples. This condescending attitude of speakers of Standard English stems from the fact that Pidgin is often associated with illiteracy.

Seminar paper from the year 2004 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Linguistics, grade: good+, University of Duisburg-Essen (Institute for Foreign Language Philology - Anglistics/American Studies), course: Hauptseminar "English Varieties", language: English, abstract: English in West Africa is a complex field of investigation in the broader context of the “World Englishes”. For many years, researchers have focused on linguistic characteristics of the numerous varieties of English in this area and mostly subsumed them under the label “English in Africa” or “West African English” (WAE) (e.g., Spencer 1971; Todd 1984b; Kachru 1995, Schmied 1991). Only little attention has been paid to the single national varieties1 including Cameroon English (henceforth CamE), which is in fact a very interesting case for sociolinguistic analysis due to its status as a co-official language beside French in a multilingual environment. This paper aims to show that new approaches to the national West African varieties, in this case CamE, try to fill the gap of comparative research in this linguistic area. The first part of this paper shall introduce the reader to the complexity of the linguistic situation in West Africa in general. The status, function, and use of English in the anglophone West African countries will be determined in chapter 2. Then I will give an overview about the development of the two most important varieties of English spoken there, namely Pidgin English (PE) and WAE. This chapter will therefore serve as a basis of knowledge for the third chapter, which is the main part of this paper and deals with the new approach of Hans-Georg Wolf (2001) to “English in Cameroon”. By showing the results of the author’s study about the extraordinary sociolinguistic situation in Cameroon on the one hand and the lexical peculiarities of CamE on the other hand, I will support his main thesis, which classifies CamE as a distinct national variety within the linguistic region of West Africa. Finally, I will draw a conclusion and give proposals for further studies in this field of investigation.

This volume represents a comprehensive description of the structure of Cameroonian Pidgin, including an overview of its socio-cultural context, writing system, sounds, word formation, word classes and sentence structures. It comprises a corpus of 540 Cameroonian Pidgin proverbs and a rich glossary of over 1000 words and expressions typical of Cameroonian Pidgin which are helpful in understanding the characteristic features of the language, as well as the cultural, the social, and the philosophical contexts of the Cameroonian Pidgin speaker. Written with the first-hand experience of a “native speaker”, it will be of interest to ordinary users, as well as students, researchers and professional linguists interested in the way the language functions. Indeed, it represents a useful resource for anyone wishing to learn or know about Pidgin, especially tourists and professionals traveling to West and Central Africa.

Pichi is an Afro-Caribbean English-lexifier Creole spoken on the island of Bioko, Equatorial Guinea. It is an offshoot of 19th century Krio (Sierra Leone) and shares many characteristics with West African relatives like Nigerian Pidgin, Cameroon Pidgin, and Ghanaian Pidgin English, as well as with the English-lexifier creoles of the insular and continental Caribbean. This comprehensive description presents a detailed analysis of the grammar and phonology of Pichi. It also includes a collection of texts and wordlists. Pichi features a nominative-accusative alignment, SVO word order, adjective-noun order, prenominal determiners, and prepositions. The language has a seven-vowel system and twenty-two consonant phonemes. Pichi has a two-tone system with tonal minimal pairs, morphological tone, and tonal processes. The morphological structure is largely isolating. Pichi has a rich system of tense-aspect-mood marking, an indicative-subjunctive opposition, and a complex copular system with several suppletive forms. Many features align Pichi with the Atlantic-Congo languages spoken in the West African littoral zone. At the same time, characteristics like the prenominal position of adjectives and determiners show a typological overlap with its lexifier English, while extensive contact with Spanish has left an imprint on the lexicon and grammar as well.

This timely book brings together research on the features and evolution of Cameroon English and Cameroon Pidgin English, approached from a variety of innovative multilingual frameworks that focus on the emergence of mother tongue speakers. The authors illustrate how language and population contact, history (colonialism), multilingualism, translation, and indigenization have contributed to shaping the norms of postcolonial Englishes and Pidgins. Employing naturalistic data, the volume provides a new fascinating perspective that better situates and supplements existing research in the fields of African Englishes and Creolistics. It is particularly of key interest to sociolinguists, contact linguists, Africanists, Anglicists, creolists and historical linguists.