117 • 60 primary schools roughly half of the primary schools in Kom area with mother-tongue
classes, of which 48 are formal and 12 are informal • active production of Kom publications by the KLDC, and regular purchase of periodic
publications such as diaries and news sheets • expanding infrastructure, with five training teacher training centres, five part-time
supervisors and a coordinator of literacy and mother-tongue education. The Lamnso’ PROPELCA programme exhibits characteristics of a more mature
programme. As one of the first languages in Cameroon to take up the PROPELCA programme, Lamnso’ has been taught in local primary schools since 1981. The programme
was operating at its height in the early 1990s, after which it fell upon hard times when the primary mission school sponsors of PROPELCA in Lamnso’ decreased their support.
However, with recent government policy decisions regarding using national languages in schools, the Lamnso’ programme is once again on the increase. Some characteristics of this
programme include the following: • PROPELCA alumni who are now in their mid-20s and older, and who report a positive
impact of early mother-tongue education on their lives PROPELCA alumni survey 2003
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• classes in 39 primary schools NACALCO 2001, about half of which operate informal PROPELCA and half operate formal PROPELCA
• extensive publications in Lamnso’, of various genres • five part-time supervisors of PROPELCA teachers and literacy facilitators.
3.3. Conclusion
Current attitudes and policy in Northwest Cameroon regarding language use in education can be traced to their roots in mission policies, government priorities, and the goals
of Cameroonian citizens. Each of these segments of society historically had their own characteristic stances regarding language and education, and they also acted on each other
over the years. The influence of all three can be seen in the educational institutions, laws and practices of today.
The current use of local languages in education among the Bafut, Kom and Nso communities grows out of that history - and in particular, the 23-year history of PROPELCA
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Conducted as part of this study and described in chapter six.
118 and its sponsoring language committees. These language development institutions, and the
committed individuals who comprise them, have worked within their social and historical context to promote the development of written mother tongue and its use in primary
classrooms. This then is an outline of the historical and programmatic context of local language
use in education among the Bafut, Kom and Nso language communities. The following chapters turn to an examination of the data gathered in these language communities, in terms
of the connections between educational choices and maintenance of the local language.
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Chapter 4. The status of the mother tongue in the homeland: authority, institutions and interests
Sustainability of a given language is based on its use by individual speakers in specific social domains Baker 1996:43. Institutional support e.g. school, religion or
political systems for a languages use in particular social domains enhances the chances that it will be maintained over a sustained period of time. For minority languages, however, the
institutional support which is so crucial to language maintenance is often lacking. In an effort to understand the degree of support which exists for Bafut, Kom and Lamnso languages, this
chapter examines the position of relevant authorities, institutions and influential groups in the Bafut, Kom and Nso homelands regarding use of the mother tongue.
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4.1. Traditional authorities
The three language communities under study, along with others in the Grassfields region, are known for their political organisation into chiefdoms also called kingdoms or
Fondoms, as they are ruled by a Fon; see below. Nkwi and Warnier 1980:38 note that these chiefdoms have many features of economic, social and political organisation in
common. The current role and influence of this traditional authority structure in the Grassfields communities under study is best understood when put into the historical
perspective of roughly the last 200 years. The information described below on the Grassfields chiefdoms of the 17
th
-19
th
centuries has been largely obtained from the two most comprehensive sources on the topic: Chilver and Kaberry 1968 and Nkwi and Warnier 1982. Their own sources include oral
tradition, written history and physical evidence gathered over several decades. Together, these four researchers provide a detailed picture of the social and political structures of the
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The unpublished data used in this chapter has several sources: the PROPELCA alumni survey PAS , described in section 2.5.4 and detailed in Appendices 1-3; oral interviews OI, listed in Appendix 11; group
interviews of teachers GIT and supervisors GIS, described in Appendix 10; observations of language committee meetings LCO, listed in Appendix 5; and personal email correspondence as listed in Appendix 12.
In addition. the three language committees are referred to frequently: BALA the Bafut Language Association, the KLDC Kom Language and Development Committee. and the NLO Nso Language Organisation.
