Cameroonian English
| Cameroonian English | |
|---|---|
| Region | Cameroon (largely Northwest and Southwest regions) |
Early forms | |
| Official status | |
Official language in | Cameroon |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-1 | en |
| ISO 639-2 | eng |
| ISO 639-3 | eng |
| Glottolog | came1256 |
| IETF | en-CM |
Southern Cameroons in Cameroon | |
| Part of a series on the |
| English language |
|---|
| Features |
| Societal aspects |
| Dialects (full list) |
Cameroonian English (CamE), also known as Cameroon English, or sometimes Cameroon Anglophone English or Ambazonian English, is an English dialect spoken predominantly in Cameroon. It shares some similarities with English varieties in neighbouring West Africa, as Cameroon lies at the west of Central Africa; however, its distinctive phonetics, phonology and lexicon, influenced both by French and by indigenous Cameroonian languages, distinguish it as an independent variety. It is primarily spoken in the Northwest and Southwest regions of Cameroon.
It is a postcolonial variety of English, long in use in the territory (Southern Cameroons, now split into Northwest and Southwest). Over the years, it has developed characteristic features, particularly in lexis but also in phonology and grammar. Those characteristics were once regarded as errors but are now increasingly accepted as distinctive Cameroonian contributions to the English language.