Acceso usuarios
Jean-Paul Kouega
This article examines the use of indigenous languages in Cameroon and the attitudes of their native speakers to these languages. The subjects are a group of highly literate young male and female Cameroonians doing Combined French–English studies at the University of Yaounde I. The data collected are responses to a 36-item questionnaire devised to check the contexts of use of these languages. The analysis reveals, among other things, that some use of the indigenous languages is reported in the home setting and that these languages are hardly used in the domains of education and the media, especially TV and newspapers. Although these youths are themselves illiterate in their mother tongues, they are prepared to encourage their children to learn their ancestral languages and, if they happen to be rich, they would not hesitate to finance the development of these ancestral languages.
