I spent the day trying to create order. Like most of my days. Some people see it, others don't.



Blip 1884. In 1884 Germany gained control of what they called Kamerun. A hundred years later I went to live there, long after Britain and France had greedily fought over the spoils of the First World War and divided it between them with, as ever, no respect for local linguistic or cultural boundaries. Cameroon is very linguistically diverse and almost everyone I met there spoke at least four languages. I heard of one researcher who went into a village to ask if they had any local words that were different from surrounding words for the same things. Yes, he was told. The local word for aeroplane. Zeppelin.