Nigerian Pidgin is an
EnglishEnglish is a West Germanic language that developed in England during the Anglo-Saxon era. As a result of the military, economic, scientific, political, and cultural influence of the British Empire during the 18th, 19th, and early 20th centuries, and of the United States since the mid 20th century,...
-based pidgin or creole language spoken as a kind of
lingua francaA lingua franca is a language systematically used to communicate between persons not sharing a mother tongue, in particular when it is a third language, distinct from both persons' mother tongues.Lingua franca is a functionally defined term, independent of the linguistic history or...
across
NigeriaNigeria , officially the Federal Republic of Nigeria, is a federal constitutional republic comprising thirty-six states and one Federal Capital Territory. The country is located in West Africa and shares land borders with the Republic of Benin in the west, Chad and Cameroon in the east, and Niger...
that is referred to simply as "
PidginA pidgin language is a simplified language that develops as a means of communication between two or more groups that do not have a language in common, in situations such as trade, or where both groups speak languages different to the language of the country in which they reside...
", "Broken English" or "
Brokan". Nigerian Pidgin English was greatly influenced by the Saro or
Krios who infused words like "na" into Nigerian Pidgin. It is often not considered a
creole languageA creole language, or simply a creole, is a stable language that originates from a mixture of various languages. The lexicon of a creole usually consists of words clearly borrowed from the parent languages, except for phonetic and semantic shifts...
since most speakers are not
native speakerNative Speaker is Chang-Rae Lee’s first novel. In Native Speaker, he creates a man named Henry Park who tries to assimilate into American society and become a “native speaker.”-Plot summary:...
s, although many children do learn it early. Nonetheless it can be spoken as a pidgin, a creole, or a
decreolisedDecreolization is a hypothetical phenomenon whereby over time a creole language reconverges with one of the standard languages from which it originally derived...
acrolect by different speakers, who may switch between these forms depending on the social setting. Its superstrate is English with
HausaHausa is the Chadic language with the largest number of speakers, spoken as a first language by about 24 million people, and as a second language by about 15 million more.-Classification:...
,
YorubaYoruba is a dialect continuum of West Africa with over 25 million speakers. The native tongue of the approximately 28 million Yoruba people, it is spoken, among other languages, in Nigeria, Benin, and Togo and traces of it are found among communities in Brazil, Sierra Leone , northern Ghana Yoruba...
and
IgboIgbo is a language spoken by some 18 million mainly Igbo people in southeastern Nigeria, in the region once identified as Biafra and parts of the Niger Delta. The language was used by John Goldsmith as an example to justify deviating from the classical linear model of phonology as laid out in The...
as the main
substrateIn linguistics, a stratum or strate is a language that influences, or is influenced by another through contact. A substratum is a language which is influenced by another, while a superstratum is the language that exerts the influence...
languages. Ihemere (2006) reports that Nigerian Pidgin is the native language of approximately 3 to 5 million people and is a
second languageA second language is any language learned after the first language or mother tongue . Some languages, often called auxiliary languages, are used primarily as second languages or lingua francas....
for at least another 75 million. Variations of Pidgin are also spoken across
West AfricaWest Africa or Western Africa is the westernmost region of the African continent. Geopolitically, the UN definition of Western Africa includes the following 16 countries distributed over an area of approximately 5 million square km:*Benin...
, in countries such as
GhanaThe Republic of Ghana is a country in West Africa which borders Côte d'Ivoire to the west, Burkina Faso to the north, Togo to the east, and the Gulf of Guinea to the south...
, and
CameroonThe Republic of Cameroon is a unitary republic of central and western Africa. It is bordered by Nigeria to the west; Chad to the northeast; the Central African Republic to the east; and Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, and the Republic of the Congo to the south. Cameroon's coastline lies on the Bight of...
.
Variations
Each of the 250 or more ethnic groups in Nigeria can converse in this language, though they usually have their own additional words. For example, the
YorùbásYoruba people are one of the largest ethno-linguistic or ethnic groups in west Africa. The majority of the Yoruba speak the Yoruba language...
use the words
Şe and
Abi when speaking Pidgin. These are often used at the start or end of an intonated sentence or question. For example, "You are coming, right?" becomes
Şe you dey come? or
You dey come abi? Another example, the
IgbosIgbo people, also referred to as the Ibo, Ebo, Eboans or Heebo are an ethnic group living chiefly in southeastern and south Nigeria. They speak Igbo, which includes various Igboid languages and dialects; today, a majority of them speak English alongside Igbo as a result of British colonialism...
added the word,
Nna also used at the beginning of some sentences to add effect. For example,
that test was hard becomes
Nna men, dat test hard no be small.
Nigerian Pidgin also varies from place to place. Dialects of Nigerian Pidgin may include the Lagos, Onitsha, Benin City, and Ibadan dialects. There is also the Warri dialect which includes a lot of words that are constantly being added and replaced. Sometimes the language may vary even in different parts of the same city.
Pidgin English is most widely spoken in the oil rich Niger-Delta. It has been estimated that well over 95% of Niger-Deltans understand and speak pidgin.
Similarity to Caribbean dialects
Nigerian Pidgin, along with the various pidgin and creole languages of West Africa, displays a remarkable similarity to the various dialects of English found in the Caribbean. Linguists hypothesize that this stems from the fact that the majority of slaves taken to the New World were of West African origin, and many words and phrases in Nigerian Pidgin can be found in
Jamaican CreoleJamaican Patois, known locally as Patois or Jamaican, and called Jamaican Creole by linguists, is an English–African creole language spoken primarily in Jamaica and the Jamaican diaspora. It is not to be confused with Jamaican English nor with the Rastafarian use of English...
(also known as Jamaican Patois or simply
PatoisPatois is any language that is considered nonstandard, although the term is not formally defined in linguistics. It can refer to pidgins, creoles, dialects, and other forms of native or local speech, but not commonly to jargon or slang, which are vocabulary-based forms of cant...
) and the other creole languages of the West Indies. The pronunciation and accents often differ a great deal, mainly due to the extremely heterogeneous mix of African languages present in the West Indies, but if written on paper or spoken slowly, the creole languages of West Africa are for the most part mutually intelligible with the creole languages of the Caribbean. The presence of repetitious phrases in
Jamaican CreoleJamaican Patois, known locally as Patois or Jamaican, and called Jamaican Creole by linguists, is an English–African creole language spoken primarily in Jamaica and the Jamaican diaspora. It is not to be confused with Jamaican English nor with the Rastafarian use of English...
such as "su-su" (gossip) and "pyaa-pyaa" (sickly) mirror the presence of such phrases in West African languages such as "bam-bam", which means "complete" in the Yoruba language. Repetitious phrases are also present in Nigerian Pidgin, such as, "koro-koro", meaning "clear vision", "yama-yama", meaning "disgusting", and "dorti-dorti", meaning "garbage". Furthermore, the use of the words of West African origin in Jamaican Patois, such as "boasie" (meaning proud, a word that comes from the
YorubaYoruba is a dialect continuum of West Africa with over 25 million speakers. The native tongue of the approximately 28 million Yoruba people, it is spoken, among other languages, in Nigeria, Benin, and Togo and traces of it are found among communities in Brazil, Sierra Leone , northern Ghana Yoruba...
word "bosi" also meaning "proud") and "Unu" - Jamaican Patois or "Una" - West African Pidgin (meaning "you people", a word that comes from the
IgboIgbo is a language spoken by some 18 million mainly Igbo people in southeastern Nigeria, in the region once identified as Biafra and parts of the Niger Delta. The language was used by John Goldsmith as an example to justify deviating from the classical linear model of phonology as laid out in The...
word "unu" also meaning "you people") display some of the interesting similarities between the English pidgins and creoles of West Africa and the English pidgins and creoles of the West Indies, as does the presence of words and phrases that are identical in the languages on both sides of the Atlantic, such as "Me a go tell dem" (I'm going to tell them) and "make we" (let us). Use of the word "deh" or "dey" is found in both Jamaican Patois and Nigerian Pidgin English, and is used in place of the English word "is" or "are". The phrase "We dey foh London" would be understood by both a speaker of Patois and a speaker of Nigerian Pidgin to mean "We are in London". Other similarities, such as "pikin" (Nigerian Pidgin for "child") and "pikney" (or "pikiny"--Jamaican Patois for "child") and "chook" (Nigerian Pidgin for "poke" or "stab") which corresponds with the Jamaican Patois word "jook" further demonstrate the linguistic relationship.
Connection to Portuguese Language
Being derived partly from the present day Edo/Delta area of Nigeria, there are still some leftover words from the Portuguese language in pidgin English (Portuguese trade ships traded slaves from the Bight of Benin). For example, "you sabi do am?" means "do you know how to do it?"
"Sabi" means "to know" or "to know how to" just as "to know" is "saber" in Portuguese.
Homophones
The most important differences to other types of English is that there are only some consonants, vowels (6) and diphthongs (3) used.
This produces a lot of homophones (words sound the same with different meanings), like thin, thing and tin which are all three pronounced like /tin/.
This circumstance gives a high importance to the context, the tone, the body speech and any other ways of communication for the distinction of the homophones.
Examples
- Wetin dey happen - What is happening?
- I no no, I no know, Me no no or Me no know - I don't know
- Come chop - Come & eat
- How Far? - whats up? or hi
- babe - beautiful girl
- show - meet up with me
- Yarn or Yarning - to talk
- No dey yarn okpas for hia - stop talking trash or nonsense in here
- I don pay you - I have paid you
- No Wahala - No Problem
- this your stori get K-leg - your story is suspicious
- You no sabi wetin you dey yarn - you don't know what you are talking about
- Abeg make una check dis one out - please come check this out
- Hia - here
- you no sabi di tin wey we dey tok - you cannot understand what we are talking about
- The tin you just yarn don vex me finish - what you just said has pissed me off
- Man dey go sleep - I am leaving or going to sleep
- The babe dey do nyanga - the girl is playing hard to get
- Make we gist - lets talk or gossip
- Make i gist you wetin happen - let me tell you what happened
- That kain maths e get as e be - that kind of math is hard to understand or explain
- I go woze you finish - , "I will slap you silly", or "I will hurt you"
- I dey cut - am going out
- make una come - you all should come
- we dey hia - we are here
- Na nothing - it's nothing
- I no sabi - I'm not sure or I don't know
- Wetin dey do you sef - what's wrong with you
- No gree me knak you - Don't let me punch you
- Yanwah go gas - There will be trouble
- Waka fah from here - Go away
- dat gel get big yantch , * dat gel get big bakassi - The girl has big buttocks.
- this pikin too dey suck bobby -The baby breastfeeds a lot.
- l dey vex for u big tym - I am very angry with you
External links
Pijjin-Only Forum
English Dictionary