How is Cameroon saving their threatened languages?
A language becomes endangered when it starts losing its speakers or when the native speakers neglect their mother tongue and switch to some other language, mostly the dominant languages spoken by powerful groups. Most languages are threatened by external factors which include religion, culture, economic or military. Some internal factors also cause a language to disappear such as the negative behavior of the community for its native language. Linguistic diversity is also a cause for language extinction.
Cameroon reintroduces their mother tongue languages in the school to save them from extinction. But there is a great diversity of linguists in the country. The Bangandu language is considered the religious language of Cameroon and most of the regional languages are neglected which in turn become one of the causes of extinction. Moreover, it is very difficult or almost impossible to save Bangandu because it can’t be taught in schools.
Why do People shift to Dominant Languages?
In today’s world, it becomes a trend to shift native language to the dominant languages of the world i.e., English, French or Chinese are dominant dialects. Several factors make people switch their languages.
Economic Factor: It is the most important factor because people need to learn other languages to work with foreigners. Sometimes people ever change their location to get jobs. For example, in the US or UK people need to learn the English language to be a good competitor in the job market. This results in bilingualism. People also need to shift their languages for perfect social well-being.
Social Factor:
The social factor is also one of the biggest reasons for a language shift. The pressure of a society conceives people to learn the dominant language. In most cases, the person who speaks English will be supposed to have a successful career in the future.
Political Factor:
A quick shift happens when individuals are on edge to ‘get on’ in a general public where information on the subsequent language is essential for progress. Political factor forces on language shift. In a multilingual country, the authority typically picks one language as the most widely used language to bind together different sorts of ethnic groups. Thus, the quantity of ethnic language speakers diminishes.
Language Attitude and values:
Attitudes and values play an important role in language shift. It happens when people don’t value the ethnic languages
Demographic factor:
It also matters a lot in language shift. People within a country have different patterns of languages. The difference between the languages of one region from other causes the people to shift their languages.