Language Attitudes of Cameroonian Immigrants Towards Italian Dialects

The paper focuses on the Cameroonian immigrant community, one of the most linguistically diverse country on earth and the only African country to have known three former colonial languages. The paper deals with two main topics. First the restructuring of linguistic repertoires by Cameroonian immigrants before and after the migration in Italy, as well as their language attitudes towards the numerous idioms within their linguistic space. Second, the position and fonction of Cameroonian local languages in the complex Cameroonian community linguistic repertoire. The survey involved 492 Cameroonian students, 50 Cameroonian families and 120 children of Cameroonian immigrants based in different Italian cities, some of these recently moved in another country. The first results of the research reveal that the high prestige former colonial, official, European languages (French and Italian) tend to undermine Cameroon local languages.