| Cameroon English | |
|---|---|
| Region | Cameroon |
Native speakers | 17 million Anglophone Cameroonian (2011)[1] |
Early forms | |
| Latin (English alphabet) Unified English Braille | |
| Official status | |
Official language in |  Cameroon |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-1 | en |
| ISO 639-2 | eng |
| ISO 639-3 | eng |
| Glottolog | came1256 |
| IETF | en-CM |
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Cameroon English is an English dialect spoken predominantly in Cameroon, mostly learned as a second language.[2] It shares some similarities with English varieties in neighbouring West Africa, as Cameroon lies at the west of Central Africa.[3] It is primarily spoken in the Northwest and Southwest regions of Cameroon.[4]
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It is a postcolonial variety of English, long in use in the territory (Southern Cameroons, now split into Northwest and Southwest). Over the years, it has developed characteristic features, particularly in lexis but also in phonology and grammar. Those characteristics were once regarded as errors but are now increasingly accepted as distinctive Cameroonian contributions to the English language.
The phonemes /ɔː/, /ʌ/ and /ɒ/ tend to mergeto/ɔː/, making "cot", "caught" and "cut" homophones.[2] Similarly, "lock" and "luck" are pronounced alike. And "white-collar worker" sometimes becomes "white-colour worker" in Cameroon.[5]
Characteristic turns of phrase in the country or local coinages:[5]
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