New Language Emerges In Cameroon
A new language for linguistically divided Cameroon has begun to emerge, so that schoolchildren can more easily communicate with one another. More than 250 indigenous languages are spoken and both English and French are official languages. Many speak only one of the official languages, so one way round is to speak a mixture of the two, which has led to the emergence of Franglais.
While I can be a bit of an English language purist, I don't see anything wrong with bending a few linguistic rules if it aids communication. Languages aren't frozen in time. They evolve and change to meet the needs of their users. If they didn't, we'd still be grunting and pointing at things.
I read that English as we know it developed out of a pidgin language that came about when the Anglo-Saxons encountered Danes living in the north and east of England (the Danelaw). While Old English and Old Norse shared some similarities (they were both Germanic languages), they weren't mutually intelligible. In order to make communication more easy between the two peoples, English lost many of its inflections and began to develop its more rigid word order during this period. Some Old Norse words worked their way into the language. For example, the third person plural pronoun they. Also, much of English's vocabulary is derived from Latin via French, which was a result of the Norman Conquest. A right mixture, indeed.
I read that English as we know it developed out of a pidgin language that came about when the Anglo-Saxons encountered Danes living in the north and east of England (the Danelaw). While Old English and Old Norse shared some similarities (they were both Germanic languages), they weren't mutually intelligible. In order to make communication more easy between the two peoples, English lost many of its inflections and began to develop its more rigid word order during this period. Some Old Norse words worked their way into the language. For example, the third person plural pronoun they. Also, much of English's vocabulary is derived from Latin via French, which was a result of the Norman Conquest. A right mixture, indeed.
posted by Kealo at 14:16
2 Comments:
You've got a great handle on this language stuff, man. It was definitely a good decision for the thesis. Do you think this Cameroonian language project will take off?
I'm meeting the Prof Tuesday week, so finger crossed he'll think it's a runner.
It's hard to say if Franglais will bloom fully into a language. At the moment, it seems to be little more than a lingua franca. It's used by the children to communicate with one another at school. Presumably they don't use it at home. I can't see them using it once they leave school unless they encounter speakers of other languages at work, etc. We'll have to wait and see.
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