Bernard Fonlon

Consequences of Fonlon's Individual Bilingualism Policy

By Jikong Stephen Yeriwa, Ph.D - University of Yaounde I, Department of English

Culled from "Official Bilingualism in Cameroon: A Double-edged Sword" in Revue ALIZES N°19

Implementation of the Bilingual Policy

When the Cameroon government adopted the bilingual policy, language experts elaborated the implementation principles. Professor Fonlon was one of the experts. According to him the bilingual policy enshrined in the constitution of 1st September, 1961, placed Cameroon among other bilingual countries in the world, like Canada and Belgium. He pointed out that though these countries adopted the bilingual policy a long time ago, not all Canadians speak English and French, nor all Belgians French and Dutch (or the Belgian variety of Dutch), but he went ahead to suggest that Cameroon should be different:

Revisiting Fonlon's Vision of a Bilingual Cameroon

“de jure, Cameroon has become a bilingual state; but, de facto, it is a highly diversified multilingual, multi-cultural country” (1969)

Described as "the chief philosopher and theoretician of Kamerun's official bilingualism" (Tangwa), Bernard Fonlon was one of the main architects of Cameroon's bilingualism policy. This policy's long term goal was to transform Cameroon into a country where bilingualism would be even more deeply engrained in every day life than in Canada, and where every citizen would flawlessly speak both French and English.

According to Fonlon: