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Programme: accepted abstracts

Abstract ID: 759

Part of Session 116: God in the City (Other abstracts in this session)

Religious glottophagy: Case of the Roman Catholic Church of Cameroon in the city of Yaounde

Authors: MOUSSA, Olivier; Mbarga, Joseph
Submitted by: MOUSSA, Olivier (University of yaoundé 1, Cameroon)

The setting-up of the Roman Catholic Church in Cameroon is a long process begun at the end of the 19th century. It is the work of the German missionaries. From the beginning of their presence, the Ewondo language, the bantu language of the zone A (classified A72a according to Guthrie:1971), is one of the favorite of the German missionaries (certainly to decrease the influence of the Bali language, which the Protestant mission of Basel had established as language of evangelization and education). In the approach of German, it is clear that the evangelization must be made in local languages, the first being obstacle is which one in this linguistic myriad had to serve as medium. The obedience of the Ewondo people towards the missionaries definitively fixed them to the choice of this language. At the beginning of the 20th century the Roman Catholic Church, managed by Lord Vieter, counts the majority of the faithful of cameroun in this ethnic group. The church is profoundly rooted in this culture so much that today being Ewondo implies in a underlying way that you are catholic and it is the opposite which surprises. In the assets of the Roman Catholic Church we count as for the use of the written language, the first texts in Ewondo, consequently the first sketches of alphabets of the language (strongly influenced by the German alphabet). In other words it is the missionaries who establish the usage of the writing in language Ewondo. To arrive at the city setting-up of the Roman Catholic Church in Yaounde (city where the first explorers based), we wanted to be interested in the phenomenon of the current decadent regulation of the usage of the language Ewondo in Yaounde. Indeed the usage of the language Ewondo in Yaounde by the church is put in minority for the benefit of the languages of certain groups ethnic according to the locality in question. It is not surprising today to see right in the heart of Yaounde a parish essentially dedicated to a particular non-native community according to its setting-up in the locality. And even in the parishes which still say masses in Ewondo, is said only a single mass in Ewondo, on Sundays. The church has such a cultural weight as it impacts on the usage and even on the development of this language within families and so in the mentalities of those who should implement its arrangement and development. With this rhythm the church participates in what we indicate here by the expression " glottophagy ": the decrease and at the time the death of the language.