Cameroon 2

Listen to Cameroon 2, a 20-year-old man from Yaoundé, Cameroon. Click or tap the triangle-shaped play button to hear the subject.

Both as a courtesy and to comply with copyright law, please remember to credit IDEA for direct or indirect use of samples.  IDEA is a free resource;  please consider supporting us.

BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION

AGE: 20

DATE OF BIRTH (DD/MM/YYYY): 22/04/1992

PLACE OF BIRTH: Yaoundé, Cameroon

GENDER: male

ETHNICITY: Cameroonian (exact ethnicity unknown)

OCCUPATION: student, actor

EDUCATION: three years of college

AREA(S) OF RESIDENCE OUTSIDE REPRESENTATIVE REGION FOR LONGER THAN SIX MONTHS:

 Subject had been living in Toronto, Canada, for five years at the time of this recording.

OTHER INFLUENCES ON SPEECH:

He was born and raised in Yaoundé, Cameroon, where he went to boarding school for seven years. He has studied English and French, as well as some German and Latin.  He speaks English and French at home, and also knows his native Cameroonian language, which he rarely uses.

The text used in our recordings of scripted speech can be found by clicking here.

RECORDED BY: John Fleming

DATE OF RECORDING (DD/MM/YYYY): 03/08/2012

PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION OF SCRIPTED SPEECH: N/A

TRANSCRIBED BY: N/A

DATE OF TRANSCRIPTION (DD/MM/YYYY): N/A

ORTHOGRAPHIC TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH: 

My life isn’t that interesting, man. When I lived in Cameroon, played soccer, um, went to boarding school, which was hell, uuum, like, from the age of 9? I went to boarding school for seven years. Um, it was a tough time there. So, literally, we would leave, um, for about five months, go to school, come back during the holidays. And they did, uh, teach English, French, um. The level of learning over there is much more higher than here in Canada, um, because, I … from what, when I got here, what they taught us … in, let’s say, he- here, you guys call it Level Six; we call it Form One there. What they taught us in Form One, there, was what they were teaching us in Grade 12, here, which was a little bit much more faster. Um, um, I learned German for a little bit, and I learned Latin for a little bit. I’m still working on those, because I am no good in them. We, we do have a native language, which my mom says we should remember, but as you go on in life you slowly lose it. ‘Cause on a daily basis, it’s either French or English. So, but, I could completely understand, I could speak, I just decide not to; I don’t know why. We actually don’t even have a name for it; it’s just a dialect. Language is something which I consider, kind of, um, like, something unique, in a way. Like, we, we are from Africa. They expect me to be speaking something from a different country in Africa. But I’m like ‘trust me, Cameroon has its own completely different language than any other place in Africa. I, I’ve never been to, like, I, I’ve never traveled out of Cameroon, in Africa. There’s not like, I’ve never been to other country other than Cameroon in Africa. So, I ha-, actually have no clue, but we did learn a lot. You know, Zulu, all that kind of stuff. So, it’s very interesting stuff, languages. It’s very interesting.

TRANSCRIBED BY: John Fleming

DATE OF TRANSCRIPTION (DD/MM/YYYY): 03/08/2012

PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH: N/A

TRANSCRIBED BY: N/A

DATE OF TRANSCRIPTION (DD/MM/YYYY): N/A

SCHOLARLY COMMENTARY:

Listen for the replacement of the unvoiced /th/ consonant to /t/ (heard in “thought” in “Comma Gets a Cure”) and the voiced /th/ consonant to /d/ (heard in words like “there” and “the” throughout the recording). Note the extra lip rounding on the “strut” lexical set (heard clearly in “unsanitary” in “Comma”), the slight raising of the “kit” lexical set (heard in “English” in the unscripted speech), and the lightening or removal of /r/ sounds at the end of syllables throughout the recording.

COMMENTARY BY: John Fleming

DATE OF COMMENTARY (DD/MM/YYYY): 03/08/2012

The archive provides:

• Recordings of accent/dialect speakers from the region you select.
• Text of the speakers’ biographical details.
• Scholarly commentary and analysis in some cases.
• In most cases, an orthographic transcription of the speakers’ unscripted speech.  In a small number of cases, you will also find a narrow phonetic transcription of the sample (see Phonetic Transcriptions for a complete list).  The recordings average four minutes in length and feature both the reading of one of two standard passages, and some unscripted speech. The two passages are Comma Gets a Cure (currently our standard passage) and The Rainbow Passage (used in our earliest recordings).

 

For instructional materials or coaching in the accents and dialects represented here, please go to Other Dialect Services.