Rédaction Africa Links 24 with Mimi Mefo Info (Editor)
Published on 2024-02-23 07:28:03
In Cameroon, many parents are choosing to preserve their children’s knowledge of indigenous dialects as a means of grounding them in their culture in the face of language extinction threatened by modernity and globalization.
Gervais Diran, now in his late thirties, didn’t learn his mother tongue, Bamenjoun, until he was 12 years old. Growing up in the city, he had never known a word in his dialect until he began making annual visits to his village. It was in the village where almost everyone spoke the dialect, that Diran began to learn.
Now a father of two and a trader in Buea, Diran ensures that his first child, who is about eight years old, speaks the dialect well, and he is determined to make sure that his younger child, who is about to turn three, learns it as well. Despite being from different tribes with different mother tongues, Diran and his wife agree that it’s essential for their children to grow up speaking the dialect, whether it’s their mother’s or his.
Oneke Enowatta, a mother of one, emphasized the crucial role of the mother tongue in a child’s development. She taught her daughter the Nkenyang language first before she learned English in school, as a means of keeping her connected to her roots.
She further explained that speaking the dialect also helps her daughter understand certain things, especially those they don’t want others to understand. Most of the time, they communicate in the dialect at home while her daughter learns the official languages in school.
On February 21st, Cameroon celebrated the International Day of the Mother Tongue under the theme, “Multilingual Education: A Pillar of Learning and Intergenerational Learning.” The day is used to celebrate the country’s indigenous languages, which amount to about 250 representing the number of ethnic groups in the country.
To ensure the preservation of indigenous languages, the government has integrated the mother tongue into the teaching curriculum. On Mother Tongue Day, Cameroonian school children showcased their various cultural identities by wearing traditional outfits from their respective ethnic groups.
The headteacher of GSS Ndongo, Jame-Francis Mengnjo, expressed the importance of the day, as it is necessary for children to know and speak their languages. Some schools, however, failed to acknowledge the importance of the mother tongue in the face of ongoing GCE registration.
It is evident that there are growing concerns that children are easily forgetting their indigenous languages in pursuit of colonial languages, such as English and French, which are the official languages in Cameroon. According to a 2022 assessment by the state-run National Institute of Statistics of Cameroon, 4% of the country’s indigenous languages have vanished since 1950, with 10% of them being neglected at the moment and 7% being threatened.
Read the original article(French) on Mimi Mefo Info
