**6. Multilingual Cameroon**

Following from **Figure 3**, there has been a debate on the number of local languages spoken in Cameroon. However an estimated 280 languages are spoken in Cameroon. Cameroon is one of the sub-Sahara African countries that has hundreds of local African languages. Some of these languages are fragmented and overlap into languages spoken in other African countries, given that the partition of Africa did not respect any cultural or linguistic affiliations, cultural or physical boundaries. Following the debates on the number of languages spoken in Cameroon, it is difficult to state the exact number of local languages existing in Cameroon. A Summer Institute of Linguistics (SIL) publication in *Ethnologue* list 279 local languages [13]. Echu [14] on his part states that there are 247 languages. To him, some of the languages are varieties that emerged from other languages. Onguene Essono [15] furthers that Cameroon is likely to have 250 languages not the claims about nearly 300. See the map of Linguistic Clusters of Cameroon (**Figure 4**).

The *Atlas linguistique du Cameroun* (*ALCAM*) project did a descriptive and geographic overview of the language groups in Cameroon in 1983 providing that Cameroon has 248 languages [16, 17]. Bitjaa Kody [18] holds that there are 282 national languages in Cameroon. These numbers, in their hundreds are strongly contested and claims are made that Cameroon rather has 20 languages and the rest being variants of these twenty different African languages [19]. For that reason the glossonyms may be linguistically reduced. It means that these languages are dialects emerging from very few languages. There is a debate about what a language is and what a dialect is. However, the most commonly used criterion to distinguish a dialect from a language is mutual intelligibility [20]. A language that has several varieties in which the speakers of these varieties can understand each other is a language for those dialects. The varieties are dialects. These varieties may be called dialects which belong to a dialect cluster that frequently is identified with a particular glossonym.

*Multilingualism in Cameroon: An Expression of Many Countries in One Country DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.99703*

**Figure 4.** *Linguistic clusters of Cameroon.*

The intelligibility as a parameter requires the establishment of some sort of intelligibility threshold. SIL uses lexico-statistical calculations, questionnaires and intelligibility tests. Seventy percent intelligibility distinguishes dialects from languages. As a comparison, the intelligibility between French and Italian is 89 percent and 75 percent between French and Spanish [13]. The Scandinavian languages would be considered dialects of the same language according to this definition. A social and political feature is frequently added to intelligibility to distinguish a language from a dialect. Cultural, social, political and historical factors may be very heavily involved when a variety of a language has to be considered a language or a dialect. Social and cultural aspects play a prominent role when it comes to language status issues as considered by the speech community, and whether or not a language has and own glossonym. Generally, languages are dialects that have succeeded to politically, economically and militarily impose themselves on a people. The language becomes an abstraction which groups find them as inter-comprehensible dialects. For this reason, there is need for a reclassification of the Cameroonian local languages to fit within Guthrie's classification of languages. This will scale down on the number of languages in Cameroon because many of these are varieties of a language. From a linguistic point of view, the distinction between language and dialect is arbitrary so need another round of classification. The number of national languages in Cameroon will reduce to twenty and even 10. But this hypotheses need verification.
