Vowel sounds with restricted distribution

Some of the mergers and restructuring of vowels and diphthongs reported above are not generally found in the Kamtok of English-Kamtok bilinguals. The resurfacing of these sounds in regular Kamtok speech arises from the very close contact that exists between the two languages in the English-speaking provinces of Cameroon which are home to mainstream Kamtok. The presence of such sounds in Kamtok speech constitute a kind of linguistic interference, though some of the sounds have also been found in the Kamtok of those whose knowledge and use of English are not confirmed. Thus, the close contact that exists between English and Kamtok may be leaving more permanent marks on the latter. On the one hand, diphthong-like combinations of vowels such as /ai/, /ɔi/ , /au/ and /ia/ are seen to occur in the same word positions as the English diphthongs /aɪ/ , /ɔɪ/ , /aʊ/ and /iə/ respectively:

On the other hand, the Kamtok vowel /e/ is being “split” to produce /ε/ and /ə/ which had earlier been merged to produce it. Hence, instead of having a word like /bet/ stand for both English bed and bird, some Kamtok users regularly distinguish between /bεd/ and /bəd/, leaving the vowel /e/ to occur mostly in place of English /eɪ/. These trends certainly deserve more attention from future researchers.