Deceptive Similarities Between British English and Cameroon Pidgin English: a Lexico-semantic Investigation

Cameroon Pidgin English has a large stock of words from the English Language, French, Portuguese and Cameroonian local languages. This is as a result of the various historical contacts and economic interactions with these languages. It should, however, be noted that among all these donor languages, the English language tends to be the main lexifier. More than 60% of the words in Cameroon Pidgin English are actually from the English language. English is, therefore, the status language to Cameroon Pidgin English. The heavy presence of English words in Cameroon Pidgin English has always given the impression that it is difficult to draw a neat line between the two. This paper set out to verify the authenticity of this assumption. The results revealed that although a word used both languages look alike in form, the meaning in Cameroon Pidgin English has witnessed significant semantic adjustments from what is conceptually recognized in British English USAge. The paper went further to suggest reasons for this phenomenon