Cultural Ecologies of Endangered Languages: The ...

Cultural Ecologies of Endangered Languages: The Cases of Wawa and Njanga

SASCHA SEBASTIAN GRIFFITHS University of Kent

LAURA ROBSON University of Kent Abstract. The study of endangered languages can reveal interesting information about how languages adapt to changes in the environment of their speakers and particularly to changes in their culture. This article introduces two understudied Cameroonian languages at different stages of endangerment: Wawa (endangered) and Njanga (moribund). Njanga has been replaced by a related dialect (Sundani) and Wawa is threatened by the dominant Fulfulde language and is undergoing gradual and unexpected changes in reaction to the threat. A language ecology perspective is employed to examine data on numerals, color terms, and days of the week.

1. Introduction. The documentation of endangered languages (documentary linguistics) is concerned with the production of a “lasting multipurpose record of a language” (Himmelmann 2006:1), particularly for languages that risk disappearance. Part of the system of any such language is the adaptative processes by which the language copes with social or cultural changes (Weinrich, Labov, and Herzog 1968; Bailey and Harris 1985). At their most extreme, these processes might ultimately lead to a language’s death, whereby speakers stop speaking the language to adopt another in its place. This is usually a gradual process (Tsunoda 2005) and one that may be interrupted before the language fully disappears. The kinds of changes that a language in danger goes through and the explanations of these changes can be extremely interesting for the documentary linguist, particularly one who is concerned not only with the “what” in the study of an endangered language, but also with the “why,” “when,” and “how.”1 Incorporated into the documentation, then, should be an assessment of why the language’s decline might have come about and of what the direct effects are in the language. This article is a discussion of data from two endangered languages spoken in the southern part of Adamawa Province in Cameroon. Wawa is a language spoken by a few thousand people and has at least four dialects; Njanga is a moribund dialect of a neighboring language, Kwanja.2 Njanga has only four to ten remaining speakers. Within the last sixty to one hundred years there have been notable changes in the society, culture, and languages of people from these two groups. The Wawa, influenced by their more powerful neighbors, the politically 217

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dominant Fulbe, and by general regional developments (e.g., the introduction of state education, technological advances, etc.) have subsequently abandoned many aspects of their traditional culture. Although they have not shifted directly to speaking Fulfulde, bilingualism in Fulfulde has increased and its influence on Wawa is notable. The Kwanja also are in contact with the Fulbe and were heavily affected by the arrival of the Fulbe in the region over one hundred years ago. Nonetheless, Njanga speakers have remained relatively isolated from the direct influence of the Fulbe. Their village is comparatively underdeveloped and less modernized. Indirectly, however, population movements stimulated by the Fulbe arrival in the region brought Njanga speakers into closer contact with speakers of the neighboring dialect Sundani, which has now fully replaced the Njanga. As Njanga has been replaced by a sister dialect, the Njanga people have retained many of their traditions and a way of life similar to that of the past, unlike the Wawa. In this article, we utilize the framework of language ecology (Haugen 1972; Mühlhäusler 1996; Calvet 1999; Mufwene 2001) to explain where some of the changes to Wawa and Njanga might have originated. We also view language, in part, as a tool of culture used to transmit and perform cultural ideologies, so that changes to the culture of a people are generally followed by changes in the people’s language. For both Njanga and Wawa, we document contemporary forms in the languages and compare them, where possible, with forms that were more common in the past. For example, we compare forms remembered by elders of the community to forms used by younger speakers in the village. We also make comparisons with the languages that are replacing Wawa and Njanga and with other languages spoken in the Wawa-Njanga ecologies. In the discussion presented below, cultural change is taken to produce language change. In terms of language ecology theory, changes to a cultural ecology effect linguistic change, and it is the linguistic materials available in its language ecology that a language draws on to produce these linguistic changes. The materials in the language ecology can include borrowings from contact languages or languageinternal mechanisms. 2. The linguistic and ecological context. The Wawa and Kwanja people live in the Nigeria-Cameroon borderland, one of the most linguistically diverse areas of the world. (Ongoing work along the borderland includes that of Kießling [2006], Connell [2009, 2010], and Good [2009, 2010].) They are both autochthonous to the Adamawa Plateau region of Cameroon, a country regarded as both Central African and West African in the literature. The Wawa live in thirteen villages around a town called Banyo, as well as in Banyo itself. The central village of the northern cluster is called Oumyari, and Wawa villages are found on the border with Nigeria. There are probably around 2,500 speakers of Wawa (the speaking population has elsewhere been estimated at 3,000 [Lewis 2009]). The Kwanja region stretches fifty kilometers from Banyo to the Tikar-

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dominated village of Bankim on the Tikar Plain. The Kwanja are scattered through twenty-five villages on the Plateau and Plain and number around ten thousand (Ethnologue estimates are, again, slightly higher at twenty thousand [Lewis 2009]). Wawa and Kwanja belong to the Niger¤Congo phylum, which is the largest in the world (Heine and Nurse 2000), and closer classification places them within the Bantoid branch (see Blench [2009] for the most updated discussion of the genetic structure of Bantoid). In a narrow classification both Wawa and Kwanja are Mambiloid languages (see figure 1).

Figure 1. Classification of the Mambiloid languages showing their position within Bantoid and the Niger-Congo phylum (based on Connell [2000] and Blench [2009]).

The Wawa people are multilingual, with most Wawa people speaking at least Wawa and Fulfulde (the region’s lingua franca) and often other local languages like Vute or Mambila as well. Those who have gone to school also know French. Those who have gone to the secondary school in Banyo may even know English. Hausa serves as a trade language in the area and therefore those Wawa who live and work in town will also have either passive or active proficiency in Hausa. At present, the Wawa are maintaining their language to a large degree. The language is still being transmitted to children, and is spoken on a daily basis and in all contexts except the religious (the Wawa are all Muslim and thus use Arabic in the religious domain). Wawa is an unwritten language and all children are taught to read the Koran. Moreover, cultural changes largely involving assimilation to a Muslim Fulbe way of life mean that Fulfulde can be seen as a potential linguistic threat. The only previous sociolinguistic work on

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Wawa is a sociolinguistic survey commissioned by the Summer Institute of Linguistics (Starr 1989), which tried to determine whether Wawa was mutually intelligible with Vute.3 There has also been comparative linguistic work carried out on Mambiloid languages including Wawa (Blench 1993; Piron 1995, 1998; Connell 2000, 2001), but no linguistic work concentrating on the language itself. Njanga is one of three Kwanja dialects spoken south of the Wawa territory. Like Wawa, Kwanja is a Mambiloid language spoken in around twenty-five villages spread between Banyo on the Adamawa Plateau of Cameroon and Bankim on the Tikar Plain. Njanga, however, is, and always has been, spoken only in one particular Kwanja village, Mbondjanga. There are now only four remaining speakers of Njanga plus six rememberers, and it has no function, everyday or ceremonial, that is not met by the replacement language. For this reason, Njanga is moribund. Unlike Wawa, the threat to Njanga is not Fulfulde– although almost all people of Mbondjanga speak Fulfulde–but Sundani, a sister dialect and the replacement language. Ndung is the largest Kwanja dialect in terms of numbers and at present runs no risk of endangerment. Sundani has fewer speakers than Ndung, but also does not seem likely to die in the next few generations because it is the principal dialect used for Kwanja literacy. There are quite a number of other Mambiloid languages that are either endangered or are recently extinct (Connell 1998). Perhaps the best-known case is that of Kasabe, which is mentioned on the first page of David Crystal’s book Language Death (2000). Little is known about the reasons why Kasabe became extinct. It was shortly after it was “discovered” that the last speaker passed away, and with him his language. Another Mambiloid language on the verge of dying out is Njerep (Connell and Zeitlyn 2000; Zeitlyn and Connell 2003). The speaker population of Somyev, a language that seems to be very closely related to Wawa, has decreased from twenty or so to three in the last ten or fifteen years (Connell 1998, 2010); in 1997, there were still around fifteen to twenty speakers (Connell 1998), whereas in 2008 there were only three or four left (Bruce Connell p.c. 2008). Somyev, also known as Kila, is probably the best illustration of how changes in culture bring about changes in language (here, language endangerment). Kila means ‘blacksmith’ in Fulfulde. The people worked as blacksmiths in the past but with the demise of the blacksmith trade in the area their occupational habits changed. This consequently led to a shift in language choice among the Kila people. As with the case of Njanga, however, Fulfulde and French were not the languages that replaced Somyev. The shift was to the Torbi dialect of Mambila, which is also now endangered. 3. The sociocultural context. Both the Wawa and the Kwanja are subsistence farmers. They each have traditional practices including masquerades, ancestor worship, and sorcery, although the Wawa more than the Kwanja have abandoned these traditional practices for a more modern, more Fulbe way of life. The Fulbe are the largest ethnic group of the area and the second-largest

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group in West Africa. They arrived in the eighteenth century and conquered the area through several jihads. Thereafter, they gained political dominance over much of northern Cameroon, including the national subdivision of Banyo in Adamawa Province. This administrative area covers Wawa land and part of Kwanja territory (the other half is administrated from the Tikar-dominated center at Bankim). When the Fulbe carried out their raids they captured slaves from the villages they found en route, including those of the Wawa, Kwanja, and Mambila. The raids were eventually stopped when the German colonialists arrived in Cameroon in the late nineteenth century. However, administrative powers were granted to the Fulbe and a blind eye was turned to their demand for slaves. In consequence, tribute to the Fulbe lamido (supreme chief or sultan) continued until the 1950s (Zeitlyn 1992; Gausset 1997:39). People, autochthonous to the area, including those who had been captured as slaves, began to adopt a Fulbe identity; the process has been called “Fulbeization” (see Gausset [2010] for the most up-to-date discussion). Similarly, Fulbe identity, which entails Muslim faith, Muslim dress, and the abandonment of many traditional practices, foodstuffs, and alcohol, became attractive to those who wished to improve on their subordinate position as Wawa or Kwanja. Among the Kwanja, Fulbeization was concentrated in the Adamawa Plateau. Cultural (and linguistic) differences between Plateau and Plain Kwanja are quite noticeable (e.g., many Kwanja on the Plateau are Muslim, but all on the Plain are Christian). However, in the 1990s the Kwanja grouped together to form certain political or developmental organizations that would unify and empower the Kwanja against Fulbe domination (Gausset 1997:242). In contrast to the Wawa, the Kwanja have been quite successful in maintaining their traditions. They have also received support for language maintenance in the form of missionaries who have translated the New Testament into Kwanja. While Christianity poses a threat to certain traditional practices, it has been suggested that it is not as great a threat as Islam (Gausset 1999). This may partially explain why the Kwanja still maintain many of their traditional practices to a large degree.4 Another important social change in the region was the construction in the 1950s of the national route running from Yaounde, the capital of Cameroon, to the north of the country. It runs through Kwanja and Wawa territory and, consequent to its construction and under pressure from the national government, many Kwanja and Wawa moved their villages from the bush to the roadside. Following this, the Wawa and Kwanja in general have been increasingly exposed to modernization, though this is much less true of the people of Mbondjanga. Access to education has also been increasingly facilitated, as has access to other parts of the country and access to national ideologies for which the vehicular language is French. The thesis suggested here is that, for the Wawa at least, it is the desire to be part of the modern world, a different culture, that stimulates change in language.

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4. Cultural changes among the Wawa. The Wawa world looked rather different ten years ago, fifty years ago, one hundred years ago, and two hundred years ago. Ten years ago, there were no mobile phones and no fresh water coming from a pump in the center of the village Oumyari. 5 If one goes back further in time, one will hear stories of people who were great hunters. Since the adoption of Muslim codes of conduct (with conversion to the Muslim faith) there has been a decline in hunting, as hunted meat is usually not halal. However, stories of grandparents frequently make reference to hunting and portray previous generations as great hunters. If one goes back two hundred years, one will find that life in the Nigeria-Cameroon borderland was different from now. The Fulbe arrived in the region on horseback, elaborately dressed and fully armed with the more technologically advanced bows-and-arrows facing a much smaller and less powerful Wawa army of men with spears. One gains an impression of what this must have been like by watching the annual celebrations for the end of Ramadan in Banyo, when the lamido and his officials parade their horses around the town. In recent years, Wawa culture has given way to Islamized culture and a globalized culture. The Wawa, once known as dancers and drummers in the area, began to listen to Hausa pop. They replaced an animist religion with a global religion. Now the Wawa rarely perform non-Muslim ceremonies; they had abandoned their animist ceremonies by 1969 (Gausset 1999). These changes have been made as a conscious choice to move closer to a society that connects them to a world beyond the village. Changes in culture mean changes in what the Wawa talk about. Consequently, changes in culture bring about changes in language. If one thinks about the Wawa language and the cultural needs for which it developed (here taking language to be a tool for talking about the world), one could presume that it was used by a hunter-gatherer society that constituted a very small-scale network of people. They needed to know about, and therefore talk about, hunting, growing, and storing food. Tomasello (1999) writes that all languages begin with the information that people think is most important to talk about. Language structure arises from content through processes of grammaticalization and syntacticization. He argues that even function words ultimately have their origin in content words. This model presupposes that for every language there is some point of origin at which content is encoded in words, and that the process of organizing and systematizing the vocabulary, along with the use of words in combination, will lead to the development of a grammar for that language. If content is the origin of grammar, then what happens when at a certain point in time the linguistic system adapted to one particular sociocultural setting is confronted with radically new technologies, behaviors, and intellectual challenges? 5. Ecological Influences on Language? Language and the world in which it is spoken exist in a symbiotic relationship. Haugen coined the term “language ecology” to describe the interactions between language and environment where the “true environment” of a language is “the society that uses it as one of its

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codes” (1972:325). Here, environment or ecology means historic environment (diachronic development of the language), regional environment (dialectal variation), political environment (language status and policy), institutional environment (to what extent the language is institutionally supported), and psychological environment (speaker attitudes and issues of identity and language). This definition of language ecology has now been adopted, developed, and elaborated by a wide range of disciplines and academics with varying perceptions and goals (see Mühlhäusler [2001] for a good definition of language ecology). Most notably, Haugen’s work has been utilized by linguists researching minority languages, language shift, and language death (Mackey 1980; Edwards 1992; Sommer 1997; Grenoble and Whaley 1998). These works address principally what Mühlhäusler calls the “functional interrelationships” between languages and “their natural and cultural environment” (2001:133). However, while such applications often look only at the functional effects of language ecology (i.e., language shift), others make reference to “structural” consequences (Mühlhäusler 1996:282—310; Sommer 1997; Calvet 1999; Mufwene 2001). Of particular interest to this present discussion is Calvet’s use of language ecology to explain language form. He describes how a language “acclimatizes” to its ecology. In particular, he explains formal differences in standard, Marseille, and Mahgrebi varieties of French as adaptations to differing ecologies and the “social demands” that this ecology makes on the speakers in their choice and use of language. He defines acclimatization as “how something (here a language) displaced from one environment to another can survive” (1999:142). The way in which languages acclimatize, according to Calvet, is by using the materials that the language offers. He calls this the “self-regulation of a language.” Thus, society demands that, for example, standard, Mahgrebi, Marseille, and other African varieties of French identify their speakers as distinct from one another, and so each variety uses a different mechanism to produce distinct forms that mark out each variety as representing a distinct group of speakers. The point here is that society stimulates changes in an environment, but it is the linguistic system that undergoes the change (or the linguistic systems, because a language might borrow from languages with which it is in contact). Both Njanga and Wawa demonstrate how evolving ecologies affect language form–Njanga, in the way it differs from its replacement language, Sundani, and Wawa in its adaptation to cultural changes by use of elements from Wawa and other languages within Wawa speakers’ ecology. 6. The data. 6.1. The numeral systems. In the past few decades, the Wawa have moved from a base-five (quinary) system to a base-ten (decimal) system (see table 1). The change seems to have coincided with the introduction of a national currency that is based on a European-style decimal system. In the old system, all numbers larger than ‘five’ are derived from numbers ‘one’ to ‘five’. The word for

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‘ten’, which was elicited by an elderly speaker, means ‘two times five’ (b‹n¤tè). The numbers ‘six’ to ‘ten’ are morphological complex. In the new system, all numbers larger than ‘five’ are borrowed. These are the numbers that Wawa people know and use now. The numbers ‘six’ to ‘nine’ are borrowed from Fulfulde, which, like “old Wawa,” follows a quinary system. However, when these forms are borrowed into Wawa they are analyzed as simplex, as with the European (French) system. The new number ‘ten’ is borrowed from Vute (a related language of the area to which the Wawa are culturally and linguistically close); numbers larger than ‘ten’ are derived from this new form for ‘ten’, again in the same way as in French. The more recent numeral system is thus a mix of Wawa, Fulfulde, and Vute (see table 2). That the new system is constructed from a number of languages spoken in the region can tell us a lot about language ecology. Comrie (2005) notes that numeral systems are easily replaced (see also Harrison 2007:195—98), but this does not mean that the linguistic forms of the numerals are necessarily replaced by others. Although the Wawa have shifted from their original system to a European one, they have not borrowed the numbers themselves from any European language. Instead, the material used is that available in the Wawa language ecology. For example, the number ‘sixteen’, tò÷¯×¤bà¤dðé gò, is in part Wawa (bà ‘and’), part Fulfulde (dðégò ‘six’), and part Vute (tò÷¯× ‘ten’). This is summarized in table 2. What the case of the Wawa numeral system shows is how a numeral system and the representation of quantity can change. Everett (2005, 2009) claims that in Pirahã there is no use for a recursive numeral system that can generate an infinite number of numerals, so there is no number system in the western sense. However, there is a use for a system of quantity representation that consists of three words roughly translated as ‘one’, ‘two’, and ‘many’ (see Gordon [2004] and Frank et al. [2008] for discussion). The data in table 2 illustrate that the system of numbers is not carved in stone, static and unchangeable, but rather will adapt to the social and cultural life of the speech community. Everett’s Pirahã rejected a modern numeral system. The Wawa, on the other hand, were attracted by the modern system. Where the culture of the Pirahã prevents them from adopting another culture’s system, the Wawa are attracted to the modern culture’s numeral system. Modernization in Wawa cultural ecology has brought greater access to Western systems of counting. One can presume that numbers larger than ‘five’ have become more frequent with the introduction of money, as well as with the growth in education that would also expose the Wawa to Western counting systems. Inflation means that larger figures feature more in the everyday speech of people. A decimal system is also more ubiquitous, visible on men’s football shirts, coins, motorbikes, and books, and in the Koran. Numbers higher than ‘five’ have become associated with an attractive modern world. Social and cultural adaptations have taken place and, cooperatively, the linguistic system has adjusted to these changes.

‘two (times) five and five (plus) four’

‘head of fives’

19 bên¤tè¤bà¤tè¤nàrè¤bœŸ

20 ngóV¤tèn¤bœŸ

‘two (times) five and five (plus) three’ tò÷¯×¤bà¤dðétátì

18 bên¤tè¤bà¤tè¤tà¤bœŸ

ngóV

tò÷¯×¤bà¤dðénáV

tò÷¯×¤bà¤dðédìdì

‘two (times) five and five (plus) two’

17 bên¤tè¤bà¤tè¤b‹m¤bœŸ

tò÷¯×¤bà¤dðé gò

mùsí bêm¤bœ tà¤bœŸ nàrè¤bœŸ tèn¤bœŸ dðégò dðédìdì dðétátì dðénáV tò÷¯× tò÷¯×¤bà¤mùsí tò÷¯×¤bà¤b‹m¤bœŸ tò÷¯×¤bà¤tà¤bœŸ tò÷¯×¤bà¤nàrè¤bœŸ tò÷¯×¤bà¤tèn¤bœŸ

‘two (times) five and five (plus) one’

‘one’ ‘two’ ‘three’ ‘four’ ‘five’ ‘five (plus) one’ ‘five (plus) two’ ‘five (plus) three’ ‘five (plus) four’ ‘two (times) five’ ‘two (times) five and one’ ‘two (times) five and two’ ‘two (times) five and three’ ‘two (times) five and four’ ‘two (times) five and five’

mùsí bêm¤bœŸ tà¤bœŸ nàrè¤bœŸ tèn¤bœŸ tè¤múV tè¤bêm¤bœŸ tè¤tà¤bœŸ tè¤nàrè¤bœŸ bên¤tè bên¤tè¤bà¤mùsí bên¤tè¤bà¤b‹m¤bœŸ bên¤tè¤bà¤tà¤bœŸ bên¤tè¤bà¤nàrè¤bœŸ bên¤tè¤bà¤tèn¤bœŸ

“NEW WAWA”

16 bên¤tè¤bà¤tè¤múV

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15

LITERAL MEANING

“OLD WAWA”

Table 1. The Past and Present Wawa Numeral System

Wawa Wawa Wawa Wawa Wawa Fulfulde Fulfulde Fulfulde Fulfulde Vute Vute and Wawa Vute and Wawa Vute and Wawa Vute and Wawa Vute, Wawa, and Fulfulde Vute, Wawa, and Fulfulde Vute, Wawa, and Fulfulde Vute, Wawa, and Fulfulde Vute, Wawa, and Fulfulde Wawa

SOURCE LANGUAGE

‘head’

‘ten (and) none’

‘ten (and) eight’

‘ten (and) seven’

‘ten (and) six’

‘one’ ‘two’ ‘three’ ‘four’ ‘five’ ‘six’ ‘seven’ ‘eight’ ‘none’ ‘ten’ ‘ten (and) one’ ‘ten (and) two’ ‘ten (and) three’ ‘ten (and) four’ ‘ten (and) five’

LITERAL MEANING

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Table 2. Numeral Borrowing in Wawa and Composition of the Wawa Numeral System NUMERAL 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

WAWA

FULFULDE

VUTE

mùsí bêmbœŸ tàbœŸ nàrbœŸ tènbœŸ tèmúV tèbêmbœŸ tètàbœŸ tènàrbœŸ bêntè

gotƒl didi tati naƒ dðuƒ dðego dðedidi dðetati dðenaƒ sapo

m÷³í bV³ :nœ³ t.:rà nà:rà tV³ :nà dðé:gt dðè:dVdi dð@:t.ti dð³ @náni tò÷× / s÷´×

NOTE: Numerals used today by Wawa speakers are in bold type.

The most interesting aspect of this change is the morphological regularity of the old system. In the old system, all numbers larger than ‘five’ are derived from numbers ‘one’ to ‘five’.6 Even the word for ‘ten’, which only one speaker (a very old woman) knew in the original form, is seemingly derived from other numerals (meaning ‘two times five’). The new system, in contrast, has lexicalized all numbers from ‘one’ to ‘ten’. The numbers from ‘six’ to ‘ten’ have become simplex.7 In this way, while Wawa has made a change from its original system to another’s (a “Western” one), it has not borrowed any actual Western numerals. Instead, it has used material available in its language ecology to reorganize the old system and, subsequently, a new base-ten (decimal) numeral system has developed from the former quinary base-five system. The data are indicators of social and cultural changes taking place and evidence of the linguistic system adapting. The results are also in line with Sampson (2009) and Gil (2009), who suggest that some proposed universals of language are found around the globe only through contact with world languages, and particularly with European languages. Zipf’s law implies that what is culturally central is encoded in short words (Mühlhäusler 2003:34). We might adapt this to suggest that more frequently occurring words are more likely to be encoded in simplex morphology. The numeral system is an area in which Njanga differs slightly from its sister dialects (see table 3). As well as some phonological contrasts, such as that between tòy´n in Njanga and tòûn in Sundani and Ndung, there is a lexical difference in the word for ‘ten’. Like old Wawa, the Sundani and Ndung systems are quinary (base five) (see Payne 1997:66—68). In Njanga, however, ‘ten’ has no traceable etymology to ‘five times two.’ In Sundani and Ndung, ‘eleven’ is formed by attaching the demonstrative suffix ¤sí to ‘ten’ and then forming an associative construction with the number ‘one’. In Njanga, however, the form is literally translated as ‘ten on top of one’, as tík®³ means ‘on the top of’. Interestingly, the number ‘ten’ in the Njanga system is closer to Mambila and Nizaa,

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another Mambiloid language, and it may be that the Njanga form is the older form. However, unlike Wawa, all of the Kwanja languages have maintained Kwanja numerals up to ‘twenty’. The word for ‘twenty’ is wùr®³ bô¨ n, which means literally ‘all of the person’ (i.e., all of the digits of a person). Table 3. Numerals in Each of the Kwanja Dialects NUMBER 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11

NJANGA

SUNDANI

NDUNG

má:n f÷³r t.r nà:r tòwín / tòy´n tòÿ´n¤má:n tòÿ´n¤f÷³r tòÿ´¤t.r tòÿ´¤nàr jw÷´rŒ jw÷´rV tíkà má:n

má:n fè: t.r nà:r tòûn tòán¤má:n tòÿ´n¤fè: tòÿ´¤t.r tòÿ´¤nàr bô¯ ¤fÿ × bô¯ ¤fÿ פsì má:n

má:n fè: t.r nà:r tòûn tòá¤má:n tòÿ´næfè: tòÿ´¤t.r tòÿ´¤nàr bŒ¤fe bŒ¤fe ¤sì má:n

Table 4. ‘One Hundred’ and ‘One Thousand’ in Kwanja as Borrowed from Fulfulde NUMBER

FULFULDE

NJANGA

SUNDANI

NDUNG

WAWA

100 1000

temere boro

té:mér@ btrù

té:mér@ btrù

tém@Þ : btrù

té:mér@ btrù

When one looks at numbers ‘one hundred’ and ‘one thousand’ (see table 4), one can see that Kwanja, too, has borrowed from Fulfulde. This is because it was unlikely that, prior to modernization and the introduction of money, the Kwanja or Wawa had need to refer to these numbers. The autochthonous people traditionally used cowrie shells as currency (the word for ‘money’ in Njanga is still njékùr®³, which means ‘cowrie’). It is likely that the Kwanja and Wawa borrowed names for the newly needed numerals ‘hundred’ and ‘thousand’ from a language that already had them–Fulfulde. A final interesting point regarding counting and money is that when the Kwanja refer to a twenty-five-cent piece they do not call it ‘twenty-five’, but rather ‘five’ (short for ‘five times five’), and a fifty-cent piece is ‘ten’ (short for ‘ten times five’). This possibly reflects the older base-five counting system, which is thus maintained despite the introduction of the decimal system in money. 6.2. Color terms. Wawa and Njanga color terms are listed in table 5. In Kwanja and Wawa, there are no basic color terms as described in Berlin and Kay’s model (1969)–that is, terms that refer only to the color rather than some item that is indexical of the color (see also Harrison 2005:29). In Kwanja, the

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words for ‘white’, ‘black’, and ‘red’ are polysemous, derived from the words ‘moon’, ‘darkness’, and ‘ripe’, respectively. In Wawa, this is also the case except that the word for ‘white’ is ‘clearness’ or ‘light’. In Njanga, the term for ‘brown’ is b‹rô¯ f‹n¤f‹n, meaning ‘dark red’; all other terms are borrowed from Fulfulde. In Wawa, the terms for ‘yellow’ and ‘grue’ (i.e., the range covering green and blue) are borrowed from Fulfulde. Table 5. Color Terms in Wawa and Njanga COLOR

WAWA

NJANGA

‘white’ ‘black’ ‘red’ ‘brown’ ‘blue’ ‘green’ ‘yellow’ ‘orange, light brown, purple’ ‘pink’

bùbùr sé´sêr bÿ¯rÿ³ dáV sŒdì dð®´rgìn®´ sŒdì òndV ráŒjá dáVdáV bÿ¯rÿ³bÿ¯rÿ

wŒrú jír¼ b‹r¼ b‹rô¯ f‹n¤f‹n sŒ:dì sŒ:dì màgánà – –

Color terms are not frequently used vocabulary items in Wawa or Kwanja and, for Kwanja at least, are not an important or integral part of the culture. The most frequently used are ‘white’, ‘black’, and ‘red’. An experimental study of Wawa color terms was carried out in the village of Oumyari. Participants were asked to name the colors of items of clothing and pictures. Informants were always shown two (and only two) colors at a time and asked to name them. There is no specific word for ‘color’ in Wawa or Kwanja, although they use the word for ‘water’ (mbùm/njimi) to name what one would term ‘color’ in English. The survey produced a list of ten color terms. Brenzinger (2009) argues that if a researcher asks for color terms he will get color terms, meaning that researchers often impose their cultural ideas about what exists in language on the group of people they are researching. Thus, even if color terms are not part of Wawa culture, one might still be able to obtain them. However, despite the low frequency of color terms in Wawa they are a part, albeit a small one, of Wawa culture and language usage; color terms can be heard in everyday use within the village. The results of the survey showed that color terms in Wawa (see table 6) fall into three types (see section 2.1). We describe the use of color terms, again, in terms of cultural changes in the language’s ecology. The word sŒdì, which appears in the terms for ‘blue’ and ‘green’, is borrowed from Fulfulde. In Fulfulde, it refers to the spectrum of colors that can in English be referred to as green and blue. Nevertheless, Wawa does not use it in the same way as speakers of Fulfulde use it–Wawa modifies the originally Fulfulde word with Wawa words to specify which tone of “grue” is meant in a certain situation. In sŒdì dð®´rg ìn®´ ‘blue’, it is unclear what exactly dð®´rg ìn®´ means, but Fulbe

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speakers have not previously heard of this combination. On the other hand, sŒdì òndV is clearly half Fulfulde and half Wawa; òndV means ‘grass’ in Wawa. The term ráŒjá is Fulfulde. The words for ‘purple, light brown, orange’ and for ‘pink’ are reduplications of more stable color terms. Thus ‘pink’ is ‘red-red’; ‘purple, light brown, orange’ is ‘brown-brown’. Table 6. Wawa Color Terms COLOR

WAWA

STABLE

SOURCE LANGUAGE IS WAWA

‘white’ ‘black’ ‘red’ ‘brown’ ‘blue’ ‘green’ ‘yellow’ ‘orange, light brown, purple’ ‘pink’

bùbùr sé´sêr bÿ¯rÿ³ dáV sŒdì dð®´rgìn®´ sŒdì òndV ráŒjá dáVdáV bÿ¯rÿ³bÿ¯rÿ

yes yes yes ? no no yes no no

yes yes yes yes no ? no yes yes

6.2.1. Variability in color naming. Some criticism of Everett (2005, 2009) was directed at his depiction of the color term system of Pirahã. However, this is in part due to a misunderstanding of Everett’s interpretation of the data. Many critics have assumed that color terms are stable for a given community (Kay 2005), whereas Everett’s more relevant point is that some color terms, or even all, are variable (i.e., not stable). In Wawa, it was clear from the survey results that apart from the basic colors sé´ sêr ‘black’ and bÿ¯rÿ³ ‘red’,8 as well as the clearly borrowed term ráŒjá ‘yellow’, none of the colors were stable, that is, they were not given the same name by all informants. The degree to which it was possible to negotiate meanings with a majority of informants is especially surprising. For example, if one showed purple and blue together, in most cases informants would opt to call purple dáVdáV, but if it was presented along with orange, it would be named as sŒdì dð®´rg ìn®´. Similarly, orange would be called dáVdáV, if contrasted with red, whereas it was named bÿ¯rÿ³, if contrasted with purple. This is interesting because it shows variability in color naming. What is going on here is that in traditional Wawa (and Kwanja) culture there is little need to refer to colors. Following contact with the outside world and movement towards modernization, the Wawa have, again, adapted linguistically (by borrowing some color terms), yet there is still little culturally ingrained use for color terms and in consequence one finds much variability in these terms. As with many phenomena observed in Oumyari, it seemed that older speakers tended not to use the Wawa terminology for the expanded color term system, and that their language relied much more on Fulfulde borrowings. The most significant difference was that older speakers used màgàn. for ‘green’, while the young speakers did not (in Kwanja, màgàn. is ‘yellow’). None of the younger speakers

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that were asked about color terms used this word. This suggests an increasing tendency to avoid Fulfulde borrowings. One can thus define three types of color terms in Wawa. First, there are the three basic terms that are used more frequently in everyday language. These are the words for ‘black’, ‘white’, and ‘red’. These terms are interesting in themselves because they do not exclusively reference colors, but instead also polysemously reference other concepts (ones that are indexical of the color). They are basic in that each is fixed in the denotation of a particular color. Then there are words that were borrowed from Fulfulde over fifty years ago (as can be deduced from the fact that they are prominent in the vocabulary of elder Wawa speakers) and, finally, there are terms that result from a recent influence from Western culture that gives importance to color terms. What is most interesting is that the variable nature of most color terms suggests that color terms are still not so important to Wawa culture. In Kwanja, color terms are not very frequent in dayto-day conversation. Although no experimentation has been carried out on color terms in Kwanja, it is unlikely that similar results to those obtained among the Wawa would occur. Color terms in both Wawa and Kwanja evidence the effects of ecology of language. When the social or cultural demand is there (imposed by a researcher) to give a name for something, the language uses the material available–either material found in the language-internal system (bùbùr, sé´sêr, bÿ¯rÿ³) or in contact languages (sŒdì, màgàn., etc). 6.3. Days of the week. A final interesting instance of linguistic change reflecting cultural change exemplified in Wawa can be found in the days of the week. Both the Wawa and Kwanja people used to observe a ten-day week. For the Kwanja there were apparently no names for the days except for the final day of the week, which was called ‘market’. This was the day on which the locals would stay away from the fields and host their weekly market (or travel to a neighboring one). Markets in Africa are a large part of weekly life. The day a local market is held is not only a day for buying and stocking up on necessary products, but also a day for drinking, eating, relaxing, and celebrating. In the past (up to around sixty years ago), people would record the days of the week by breaking off a grain of a particular sort of ten-grained blade of grass. Once the ten grains had been extracted the blade was snapped in two, and that represented one week. Three of these ten-day weeks made a month, and this was how time was measured for growing crops. Today, both the Kwanja and Wawa observe a seven-day Western week. The Kwanja still call Sunday sÿ³mnì- (or t.nì- in Sundani), meaning ‘market’. They do not have any Kwanja equivalents for the other days, however, and the consensus among most consultants is that this has always been the case. Now, people use French days of the week. The same is true for Wawa. However, in the past, each day of the ten-day week in Wawa had a name. This system displays some similarity to the counting system–the ten-day week is divided into two five-day sections, with a market day at the end of each five-day section. The list is given in table 7.

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Table 7. Wawa Days of the Week 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

tò®´Vrÿ³ gŒrÿ³r b®´mdÿ³ kègrÿ³ l.mbÿ³r d÷¯×gÿ³r m®´gmÿ³r tò÷³rÿ³ mÿ³dð®´rÿ³ m®´×g÷¯×dÿ³

Young Wawa children do not seem to be aware of the former ten-day system. Teenage and young adult speakers, however, might remember that Wawa used to have a ten-day week. The middle-aged generation of speakers might even remember the names themselves (usually their account will be imperfect and they will forget more than one item). Finally, the oldest generation–those who can be called village elders–remember the names of the days of the week, although only a very few speakers still remember the correct order. One has the impression, then, that knowledge of the names of the Wawa days is some kind of measure of knowledge of “old Wawa” (i.e., how it used to be spoken). It is thus important to document the range of knowledge and variety in naming the days of the week across the generations. By documenting this information with various speakers of differing ages, we are documenting language variation and language change. Structuring time in terms of days and recurrence of names of days at different intervals is a cultural practice that differs from culture to culture. Naming the days is a linguistic practice. The language adapts to the culture. In the past, the Wawa and Kwanja ten-day system was completely abandoned; subsequently, the day names were lost from the Wawa language. If you ask the people in Oumyari why the Wawa ten-day system was abolished, they will tell you that this is due to the fact that the market days were changed. There is now no market at all taking place in Oumyari. Instead, the villagers go to Banyo. The days of the week allow a unique window into the time frame of this particular linguistic change in Wawa. One speaker remembered the transition from one kind of time reckoning to the other particularly well. She was able to correlate it with an event in her life which can be dated to the 1970s. This means that it is likely to be a direct consequence of the Wawa conversion to Islam in the early 1970s. The time of this conversion clearly marks the break with many Wawa traditions. It was during this period that the Wawa burned their traditional masks, for example.9 It seems that among those practices were many linguistic practices. Interestingly, for Kwanja, when one young Kwanja woman was asked for the Kwanja names for the days of the week, she gave the terms in table 8, which–

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like the modern Wawa counting system–are a mixture of the languages with which this particular speaker (given the situation in her village) had contact. Table 8. Kwanja Terms for the Days of the Week According to One Informant GLOSS

KWANJA

ETYMOLOGY

‘Monday’ ‘Tuesday’ ‘Wednesday’

m÷¯ndè áptá m÷¯ndè ga© t.nì-

‘Thursday’

dðùmbà tòâm

‘Friday’

dðùmbà kñkñr

‘Saturday’ ‘Sunday’

sa©:dè t.nì-

from English ‘Monday, via Cameroonian Pidgin from Cameroonian Pidgin ‘after Monday’ lit., ‘half the week, ( ga© means ‘share, or ‘halve, in Kwanja; t.nì- means ‘market’ or ‘week’) from Fulfulde dðumba ‘Friday, and Kwanja tòâm ‘small’ from Fulfulde dðumba ‘Friday, and Kwanja kñkñr ‘old’ from English ‘Saturday’ via Cameroonian Pidgin lit., ‘market’ or ‘Sunday’ (this is the only original Kwanja day of the week)

Another, older speaker (in his late forties)–also non-Njanga–who is usually well informed about Kwanja language, traditions, and history, gave the names in table 9. Again, they are based on a seven-day, not ten-day, week, which makes them unlikely to be traditional. Furthermore, these terms were immediately contradicted by elder informants. Table 9. Kwanja Terms for the Days of the Week According to a Second Informant (a Middle-Aged Male) GLOSS

KWANJA

ETYMOLOGY

‘Monday’ ‘Tuesday’ ‘Wednesday’ ‘Thursday’ ‘Friday’ ‘Saturday’ ‘Sunday’

mbô n sà×gà gàmà njádàrà kóná kw÷³r ndð÷ ×

not found (so far) in any other Kwanja lect lit., ‘tomorrow’ possibly derived from the verb gà ‘share’ lit., ‘spider’ not found (so far) in any other Kwanja lect possibly the same word as the Ndung word for ‘neck’ not found (so far) in any other Kwanja lect

The origins of these words (given by the same informant) are not as transparent in their meaning or derivation as the names given by the first, younger informant. It is possible that they have something to do with traditions or beliefs of some Kwanja associated with these days. Further investigation would be required to investigate the cultural meaning of the words this informant gave and why he, at least, believed they represented the days of the week in Kwanja, while so many other informants have argued that these terms did not exist (i.e., that days did not have names). What is interesting and what can be seen here, however, is how in both sets of days of the week given by the two Kwanja informants certain names of days can be traced back to words already existing in the

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Kwanja linguistic ecology. The first informant’s list (see table 8) also exemplifies linguistic material borrowed from contact languages in the language ecology. 7. Conclusion: a cultural and language ecological perspective. Changes in sociolinguistics and language structure in Wawa and Kwanja are the results of changes in the sociocultural ecology of each of these languages. The changes all reflect a move towards modernization. More locally, there have been historical influences from the Fulbe. Social and cultural change has not effected an outright language shift in either the Wawa or Kwanja case (social and cultural causes of the shift from Njanga to Sundani are not covered here). Although Wawa is to some extent threatened by the local dominance of the Fulfulde language, the Wawa have adapted their language to cultural changes happening in the ecology. Njanga has been replaced by a sister language, Sundani, which is closely related. There are, however, linguistic differences between these two languages, such as in the number systems (see section 6.1), that are the products of distinct ecologies. Thus, the elements that differentiate one language from another are the products of distinct language ecologies. As has been shown by the Wawa and Kwanja data above, when there are changes in the sociocultural ecologies of a language, the language may react by making modifications to its structure. The modifications are not always predictable, however. A language may use material made available within its ecology through contact with other languages. This is the case for Wawa numerals–some have been replaced by those existing in the contact languages Vute and Fulfulde. In other cases it is the internal mechanisms of the language that provide the material for structural change. For example, when in Wawa a difference in terminology is needed to distinguish the color red from pink, it is the internal language system that provides the mechanism of reduplication to form the contrastive bÿ¯rÿ³ ‘red’ and bÿ¯rÿ³bÿ¯rÿ³ ‘pink’. There has been much speculation in the past in different traditions of linguistics and anthropology about what relationships exist between language, culture, and cognition. Some studies rely on static concepts of language, culture, or both. Yet you will not find out much about cars by watching them go by on the motorway; should one break down in front of you, only then might you find out that they need fuel and water. It is regrettable that many languages are facing threats. However, when we study endangered languages they can reveal to us new knowledge, for example, about how culture and language interact in significant ways. An ethnographically informed approach to language documentation, such as that suggested by Harrison (2005) and here, is a necessary requirement. Wawa has not been entirely replaced, collapsed, or been driven out, as might be suggested by some theories of language endangerment. There has been a renegotiation of the means of communication (including the language form) for the Wawa people in order to adapt to changes in Wawa society and culture.

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Notes Acknowledgments. The research for this article was funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (U.K.), grant AR112306 “Documentation of Endangered Languages and Cultures in the Nigeria-Cameroon Borderland.” The authors would like to thank David Bradley, Marc Bohnes, Bruce Connell, Michael Fischer, and David Zeitlyn for comments on earlier versions of the article, as well as two anonymous reviewers for Anthropological Linguistics. Transcription. All representations of Wawa and Njanga words and expressions are in IPA (international phonetics alphabet). They are phonemic representations of words collected in various forms (elicitation, recording, interviews, etc.). Wawa has three tones represented in these transcriptions (high, mid, and low) and Njanga has four (extra-high, high, mid, and low). 1. That is, not just what the language is, or was in the past, but also why the language has declined in usage, when the decline began, and how the language is changing (i.e., what effects language endangerment has on the language’s form). 2. Within this article, Wawa is referred to as a language and Njanga as a dialect. In general remarks, Njanga is also sometimes referred to as a language. In Africa (as elsewhere), it is difficult to distinguish between dialects and languages, particularly where dialects are mutually unintelligible (see Piron [1998] for a reconsideration of the genetic position of Kwanja and Mambila dialects), and some scholars employ the term “lect.” For simplicity’s sake, in this article “language” is used as the general term and Njanga is specified as a “dialect” where appropriate. 3. The report was motivated by the impression that Wawa and Vute were indeed quite different-sounding languages, although previous mentions of the people of the area counted them among the speakers of Vute. The survey concluded that Wawa and Vute are not mutually intelligible, and that Wawa is an independent language. However, it was decided that the Wawa had no need for a Bible translation or literacy program, as the Wawa people are bilingual in Fulfulde. 4. This cannot, however, be said to be the only, nor the biggest reason why the Kwanja have better retained their traditions. Other reasons are geographical and historical. The Kwanja are spread over two administrative centers, so the power of the Fulbe does not affect all Kwanja and more Wawa than Kwanja worked for Fulbe, and in conjunction with the Fulbe. 5. Many Wawa villages in the northern village cluster also have fresh-water pumps. 6. Heine (1997) and Hammarström (2004) discuss the special status of numbers with small values. 7. The numbers from ‘six’ to ‘nine’ are complex in the source language, Fulfulde, but they are simplex in Wawa. The number ‘ten’ is borrowed from yet another language, as mentioned earlier. 8. Note that ‘white’ was not included in the study. 9. This happened apparently because the elders saw that their children were converting to Islam and would no longer be able to give them the ritual burial (which involved masquerades) that their tradition required, so they burned their masks.

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