The country's languages

Languages of Cameroon: Ewondo, Duala, Bassa, Fulfulde, Pidgin…

A country of hundreds of languages

How many languages?

Cameroon has between 250 and 300 languages depending on the source. The 21st edition of Ethnologue (2018) lists 283, of which 277 are living; a study by Breton and Fohtung (1991) counted 247, and Glottolog lists 309.

Language families

Three of Africa's four major language families are present in Cameroon. The Niger-Congo family is by far the best represented: it includes the Bantu languages of the South and the coast, the Grassfields languages of the Western and North-Western highlands, and Fulfulde. Afro-Asiatic languages, mostly Chadic, are spoken in the North, while the Nilo-Saharan family has only a few languages there, including Kanuri around Lake Chad.

French and English

French and English are the two official languages: official bilingualism was introduced after reunification on 1 October 1961, and the revised Constitution of 1996 states that the Republic "shall adopt English and French as official languages of equal value". Eight of the ten regions are mainly French-speaking; the North-West and South-West are English-speaking, and Cameroonian Pidgin serves as their common language.

National languages

Since 1974 all Cameroonian languages have been called "national languages", and the 1996 Constitution commits the State to "protect and promote national languages"; the 1998 education law provides for their teaching. A National Commission for the Promotion of Bilingualism and Multiculturalism was set up in 2017, and a 2019 law governs the equal use of French and English in public services.

Cameroonian French and Camfranglais

Cameroonian French has borrowed many words from the country's languages, such as makossa, ndolé, njangui and kongossa. Camfranglais, which emerged in the cities in the mid-1970s, blends French, English, Pidgin and local languages; it is spoken mainly by young people aged 12 to 26.