A Contrastive Analysis of Cameroonian Pidgin English and Standard British English

Abstract

The marriage between Cameroonian Pidgin English and Standard British English is bound by History. This corpus study applies the Sequential Explanatory Design to explore Cameroonian Pidgin English and Standard British English, with the quantitative data and results providing a general picture of the research problem while the qualitative data refines and elaborates on the general picture. The analysis is based on lexical, morphological, syntactic, declarative, imperative, and interrogative features of Cameroonian Pidgin English (CPE), with reference to Standard British English (SBE). The lexicon of CPE is a criteria-free open register of words with local, native, and foreign affinities. The morphology is characterized by Possessive adjectives usually placed in front of the noun they qualify; possessive nouns take yi, ma, ya, we, dia, and wuna, with dem as the main indicator of plurality, while pronunciation is mostly a representation of the sound closest to the speaker’s first or native language. The arrangement of words to show connections of meaning within the sentence is similar for CPE and SBE, except that CPE is wordier. The origin of CPE is linked to the history of the nation and cultural spillovers. Born of an illiterate culture, and purposefully for communication; prone to rapid growth, very easy to learn because it is acquired through immersion. Its lexicon, morphology, and syntax borrow a lot from the ‘rule book’ of SBE. Linguistic structures should be created for the development and standardization of CPE, and they should be among the main languages on all radio and television media in Cameroon. Meanwhile, Pedagogues, Educators, and policymakers should facilitate introducing CPE into the curriculum.