Mother Tongue Day: Cameroonian parents using language to connect children to their roots

In Cameroon, many parents are seeking to anchor their children in the indigenous dialects, as a way of grounding them in their culture amid a threat of language extinction posed by modernity and globalisation.

Gervais Diran, now in his late 30s, learned his mother tongue, Bamenjoun, when he was 12.

Growing up in the city, he never knew a word in his dialect until the age of 12, when he began making annual visits to his village.

In the village, almost everyone speaks the dialect, and so Diran started learning.

The father of two, now a trader in Buea, says his first child, who is about eight years old, speaks the dialect well, and he is making sure that the younger child, who is getting to three years old, should learn too.

Although Diran and his wife are from different tribes with different mother tongues, he says he can’t allow his children to grow up without speaking the dialect, be it that of their mother or his.

“My child must speak the dialect. I will make sure that I send him to the grandmother in the village very often,” he said. 

Oneke Enowatta, a mother of one, stresssed the crucial role the mother tongue plays in every child’s development.

She said she taught her daughter the Nkenyang language first before she could learn English in school.

“I speak the mother tongue with her because I want her to know where she is coming from. She should not forget her roots,” she said.

She added that speaking the dialect is also important for her daughter to properly understand certain things, especially things they don’t want another person to understand.

Oneke told MMI that most of the time, they communicate in the dialect at home while the daughter learns the official languages in school.

On Wednesday, February 21, Cameroon joined the rest of the world to commemorate the International Day of the Mother Tongue under the theme, “Multilingual Education: A Pillar of Learning and Intergenerational Learning.”

UNESCO defines mother tongue as “the language that one has learnt first; the language one identifies with or is identified as a native speaker of by others; the language one knows best and the language one uses most”.

In Cameroon, Mother Tongue Day is used to celebrate the country’s indigenous languages, which amount to about 250 – representing the number of ethnic groups in the country which speak different languages. 

That is why the government has integrated the mother tongue into the teaching curriculum.

So, on Mother Tongue Day, Cameroonian school children showcased their various cultural identities.

At Government Primary Ndongo in Buea, children were seen wearing the Bakweri, Nso, Banyangi, and Oroko traditional outfits.

“It is a very important day for us, everybody, and our children,” said the headteacher of GSS Ndongo, Jame-Francis Mengnjo.

She told MMI that it is very necessary for children to know that they are supposed to speak their languages. 

“I made the children and teachers come to school in their traditional regalia. We had a lot of dances.”

She said the day was interesting as they reminded the pupil of the necessity of knowing the mother tongue.

“We identified so many children that came from different tribes. I spoke in lamnso and asked the children to translate what I said, and some did, and I was very impressed,” she added.

Despite other schools showing the importance of the mother tongue, some schools did not bother to.

At Summerset Secondary and High School Buea, the principal told MMI that they did not have time to commemorate Mother’s Tongue Day due to ongoing GCE registration.

He said in previous years, the students would sing the anthem and songs in the dialect.

Mother’s Tongue Day is celebrated once a year. And there are growing concerns that children are easily forgetting their indigenous languages in pursuit of colonial languages, including 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.
 
Mimi Mefo Info