A Recorded Text Survey of the Mfumte Speech Varieties and Rapid Appraisal Survey of Dzodinka
The purpose of this survey was to determine the language development needs of the Mfumte people. The Mfumte ‘people under the palms’ live in the North West Region of Cameroon and in Taraba State, Nigeria. A Rapid Appraisal (RA) survey and a Recorded Text Testing (RTT) survey were carried out as the continuation of an RA survey completed in 1994. There were two goals in this present survey: (1) to determine the potential extensibility of literature based on the Kwaja, Koffa, and Lus speech varieties to the surrounding communities and (2) to understand the language use patterns, vitality, attitudes, and inter-intelligibility in the neighbourhoods of Adere. Based on the results of the RA and RTT surveys, it is recommended that language development work be started in three speech varieties: Adere (Dzodinka [add]), Koffa, and Kwaja [kdz]. (Lus is already under development.) By identifying the language needs in the Mfumte area, work can proceed on creating orthographies, dictionaries, and other written materials.