27 months

This list comes from a recent Gmail exchange with a Cameroonian friend that was conducted entirely in Pidgin English. If I were to guess, I’d say that AdSense’s semantic analysis got hung up on the monosyllabic Pidgin words in our conversation and, lacking any other intelligible vocabulary, served up Swedish, Dutch and Vietnamese ads. For example, the Cameroonian Pidgin verb “na” (to be) is also a Vietnamese noun (custard apple), a Dutch preposition and a Swedish pronoun, which might explain some of the following:

Sponsored Links

1. Phim Han Quoc
2. Diabetes: Fucoidan Helps
3. Tin việc làm
4. Måla tak med Anza
5. Volvo Trailer Hitch
6. Liquid Fucoidan Seaweed
7. Jelly Jars
8. Hjärtklappning?
9. Kendo Martial arts in NJ
10. Kim Kardashian Is Hot?

Clearly, Google has some work to do before they’re able to effectively cater to this segment of their market (Volvo Trailer Hitch? Jelly Jars?). These Ad(non)Sense links got me thinking about Cameroonian Pidgin as a linguistic animal. Pidgins and creoles usually arise in circumstances with prolonged, regular contact between speakers of different language groups where there is no widespread, accessible interlanguage. Witness Hawaiian Pidgin, Papua New Guinean “Tok Pisin”, Sierra Leone “Krio” or any of the many variants of West African Pidgin, generally. Originally conceived as trade or “contact” languages, they served as a means for effective communication by borrowing simplified elements from different languages. Cameroonian Pidgin is derived primarily from English, but is also heavily influenced by French, Portuguese and African dialects. For example, consider the following Pidgin words in current use and their linguistic antecedents:

Portuguese
pikin — from “pequenino” (child)
dash — from “dache” (gift or tribute)
sabi — from “saber” (to know)
palaba — from “palaba” (discussion or conference)

French
gato — from “gâteau” (cake)
jandam — from “gendarme” (police officer)
kamyong — from “camion” (truck)
katsangkat — from “quatre cents quatre” (old Peugeot 404)
ku — from “coup” (to replace)

English
sidon/shidon — from “to sit, sit down”
husay — from “which side”
kotlass — from “cutlass” (machete)
motofut — from “motor + foot” (tire)
foseka se — from “for the sake of” (because)
lefam so — from “leave it so”

African vernacular
wahala — trouble
kwa —bag
kongosai — gossip
njamajama — vegetable greens
kwankanda — bachelor
nyanga — ostentation
ngondele — young woman, girl
potopoto — mud

It’s not uncommon to hear an exchange that uses vocabulary borrowed from all four of these sources. Reduplication is often used to represent superlatives, such as “smol smol”, “sharp sharp”, “qwik qwik” and so on. To make things even more interesting (or difficult to the outsider), the tones, accent, grammar and sentence structure are heavily influenced by African languages as well. As a result, spoken Cameroonian Pidgin has a very distinct accent or “cadence” that gives it a unique, African sound very much unlike English.

Despite being labeled as “broken English” or “bush English”, Pidgin is not English but rather its own language, rich with parables and African wisdom (see “More Pidgin Wisdom”). Pidgin English is usually treated as a curse by educators (see photos from the University of Buea campus, below). I’ve heard unsubstantiated claims of teachers beating students who use Pidgin in the classroom which, given the role of corporal punishment in the Cameroonian educational system, isn’t tough to believe. However, some notable Cameroonian linguists are bucking the conventional wisdom and suggesting that Pidgin is, in fact, an appropriate pedagogical language in urban centers.

I thought of reproducing some of the email conversation that begat this post, or a sample Pidgin dialogue, but it wouldn’t really capture the language accurately. Ideally, I’d make a recording with some of my Cameroonian friends talking over drinks at the bar near my house and post it. I don’t have a decent recorder, but I may be able to use the voice memo feature in my phone and transfer it with Bluetooth to my laptop. Stay tuned.