Aspects of Cameroon Francophone English (CamFE) Phonology

Abstract

Abstract-This paper analyses some aspects of English pronunciation of French-Speaking Cameroonians termed Cameroon Francophone English (CamFE) to show that this variety of New Englishes has stable features. The data come from the oral reading of some selected words and sentences (see the appendix) by 50 French-speaking Cameroonian subjects of different levels of education, radio broadcasts ( especially Morning Safari 1 ), TV debates, political speeches, casual conversations and seminar sessions.The focus is on the production of plural forms / 3 rd person singular markers '-s, -es, -ies, -oes', the simple past tense and past participle morpheme '-ed', consonant clusters, word stress, and the frenchified reading of some English words. The analysis is done from the contrastive analysis, interlanguage and language transfer perspective. Findings show that although the subjects have different levels of education and speak varied mother tongues, they produce the areas of English phonology studied in the same way. The study concludes that, although some features of this variety of New Englishes are common to all Cameroonian learners/speakers of English as well as to many other world Englishes, there are some hallmarks proper to CamFE, and draws the pedagogical implications.

A Study of Vowel Nasalization and Vowel Epenthesis Processes in Cameroon Francophone English

“…They comprise the nasal vowels / E) , A) , ç) / which are not attested in RP (Received Pronunciation) but in French. This feature of CamFE is quite stable, and has been identified by a number of previous studies (Safotso 2001(Safotso , 2006(Safotso , 2012(Safotso , 2015Kouega 2008). Those studies mostly identified the feature without getting into an in-depth analysis of its working processes.…”

“…The data analysed partly come from past studies (Safotso 2001(Safotso , 2006(Safotso , 2012(Safotso , 2015Kouega 2008) and from the oral reading of some test words by some Frenchspeaking undergraduate/ postgraduate students of the…”

“…Spoken by French-speaking Cameroonians, who for some two decades now have drastically changed their attitude toward English, CamFE (Cameroon Francophone English) has its stable phonological features which differentiate it from RP (Received Pronunciation), CamE (Cameroon English) and other New Englishes. Some features of CamFE have been studied by Safotso (2001Safotso ( , 2006Safotso ( , 2012Safotso ( & 2015 and Kouega (2008), and clearly show that it is a new variety of English in its own right. Other works on different aspects of this variety of English include Simo Bobda (2013), Atechi (2015) and Safotso (2016).…”

The Production of the Sequence -UI- by Francophone Learners of English

“…A few researchers (Abang, 2000;Kouega, 2009;2013;Ombouda Onana, 2010;Khan, 2012;Tagne Safotso, 2012 to name only these) have examined the vowel system of the English of francophones in Cameroon, contrasting it with that of RP English. A total of 24 oral vowels and six nasal ones were thus identified.…”

The Mutual Intelligibility of Cameroon English and Indian English Speakers

“…In CamE, Masanga (1983), Mbangwana (1987), andSimo Bobda (1994) report that consonant clusters simplification, reduction or the devoicing of some members of the cluster, and vowel epenthesis are stable features. Tagne Safotso (2012Safotso ( : 2473 observes that the dropping of the last member of the cluster is very frequent in CamFE , e.g. told, went, landlord .…”