Ewondo

Where and by whom it is spoken

Ewondo is the Bantu language of the Beti people, who also call it Kóló. According to the Linguistic Atlas of Cameroon (2012), it covers the Mfoundi division, home to Yaoundé, together with Mefou-et-Afamba, Mefou-et-Akono, Nyong-et-So'o and Nyong-et-Mfoumou in the Centre region, and part of the Océan division in the South region. It is the most widely spoken national language in Yaoundé, and its speakers can understand Eton, a neighbouring language.

History and writing

German Catholic missionaries, who reached Yaoundé in 1901, made Ewondo one of their languages for evangelisation and schooling: they produced the first written texts and the first alphabets for the language, strongly influenced by German spelling. In 1950 the Catholic Mission of Yaoundé published a short Ewondo grammar by Father F. Pichon, with a conversation manual and a glossary. Today the language is written in the General Alphabet of Cameroonian Languages, with tones marked by accents.

Where to hear it today

• A lingua franca of the Centre region, used by street vendors and by workers from other regions, such as lorry drivers.
• A language of the Catholic Church since German times, although the Yaoundé parishes that still use it often hold only one Mass in it, on Sundays.
• Taught in some Yaoundé schools through the ELAN-Afrique programme, although many of the city's pupils now have French as their mother tongue.

A few words

bembekiri

good morning, hello

məndím

water

bikutsi

"we beat the earth"; the name of the music and dance of the Beti region

bobolo

cassava stick, a traditional cassava dish

What sources disagree on

Speaker numbers are poorly known: Ethnologue gives about 578,000 native speakers in 1982, while French Wikipedia puts the figure at 2.5 million in 2020 without a verifiable source. The name itself is disputed: "Ewondo" is said to have originally referred to a single clan, its use for the language going back to a mistake by the first German colonists.