ABSTRACT

Grassfields Bantu (GB) consists of more than fifty languages spoken in the mountainous region of the West and North West Provinces of Cameroon. Two of the languages are found in the contiguous, mountainous, northeast portion of the SouthWest Province. Much of the landscape is covered with tall elephant or napier grass (Pennisetum purpureum). As Richardson (1957:61) noted, these languages are ‘often referred to by Europeans and Africans alike as “Grassfield” (or grafil in Pidgin) because of the nature of the terrain over which they are spoken’.