The Language Problem in Cameroon (An Historical Perspective)

Abstract

I HAVE BEEN led to believe that culture is to a country what a soul is to a man, that is, the principle of life, of unity and continuity; and, therefore, that a nation is not just merely so many millions of people living on the same land or stemming from the same ancestral origin, but that a nation, thanks to its culture, is, essentially a unit of thought and feeling and will and action. For communion of thought and feeling and will and action to be possible, there must be communication between the members of the national community. That is why a common is such an effective instrument in forging national unity. Theoretically, the human mind is supposed to think in ideas. But as a matter of practical fact, we think in words, and, this to the extent that, if we reflect as we think, we can actually hear ourselves thinking in a definite language. This substitutes itself for ideas in our minds so much so that it becomes the very warp and woof of our mental life. Thus, the union which exists between people who share the same must be very intimate indeed, because it creates, in them, a oneness in that which is the highest and the most essential thing in man, namely, the mind. Thus the cry people, One language that is heard in countries like Israel, for instance, is not an empty political slogan. What is more, among the owners of one language, this oneness of thought and feeling and will is further reinforced by the fact that this enshrines their common experiences through time and space, their achievements in letters, in the arts and the sciences, their common aspirations, their loves and hates, their hopes and fears. A communion of thought, a communion of feeling, a communion of will, a communion of behaviour-surely those who say that there is such a thing as a national character, a national personality, are not just talking airy nonsense. Such is the unifying power of that it not only binds together, in heart and mind the people whose property it is, it not only gives them a distinctive personality, but, when a acquires the enviable fortune of becoming the medium of wider expression, at the world level, it serves to bring closer together the far-flung peoples that use it. In Africa, partly due to the failure of the great African Empires to consolidate themselves and expand and endure, partly due to the constant movement of peoples, and, most especially, to four centuries of the ravages of slave raiding and trafficking, no languages, with the possible exception of Arabic and Swahili, at the African level, have been able to impose themselves as dominant media of wider expression. And thus, very few countries, today, in Negro Africa, can boast of linguistic unity. Nearly every independent African country, at present, is a patch-work of linguistic and ethnic groups.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 33 citations exist upstream.