Although multilingualism is the norm in Africa the degree of linguistic complexity varies from one specific national context to another. While some countries are highly multilingual, others have fairly few languages. Similarly, whereas in some countries a good number of languages enjoy majority status; in others, we have a myriad of primarily…

Claims that the mother tongue function in foreign language learning over a background of two or more languages is transferable to any one of the background languages and that this transfer is predictable by a set of principles. Presents applications of the principles to multilingual settings of Nigeria and Cameroon. (SED)

Cameroon, a central African state is one of the few countries in the world where, in addition to a very rich linguistically diverse landscape (a little below 300 identified indigenous languages) there is English and French (all vestiges of colonial legacy) used as official languages. Coupled with this, there is pidgin English which plays the role…

This report is the result of a two-month study commissioned by the World Fertility Survey prior to the inclusion of Cameroon in the WFS program, in order to examine the problem of linguistic diversity and the obstacles this problem might pose to a demographic survey of the country. The study was to propose a strategy which would uphold the WFS…