A study of French loanwords in the Mundang language

Abstract

This study examines French loanwords in Mundang. The Mundang language is spoken in Western Chad, Extreme Northern Cameroon and North Eastern Nigeria and to be specific the language is spoken in Adamawa state of Nigeria. Mundang belongs to Niger-Congo classification (Bender, 1989). The techniques of data collection used were oral interview and field observation. Accordingly twelve informants selected from Nigeria, Cameroon and Chad were interviewed. Thirty two (32) loanwords were identified and categorized into the following domains: education, religion, technology and transport and then health and medical. It was identified that some of the words are direct importation into the Mundang language, while others have undergone some phonological modifications. The non-radical elements were found to have the following characteristics: sonorization, velarization, fricavitation, consonant and vowel insertion and deletion, and vowel harmony. With regards to number of loanwords it is observed that technology and transport has the highest number of loanwords followed by education next is religion and lastly health and medical domains.