Pidgin is a definition applied to simplistic languages that are prone to die out.

'The fact that it is a very recent development makes the language very interesting from an intellectual point of view,' said Bernard Caron, a French linguist and secretary of the Akademi, a project set up last year with French government funding to promote research in the social sciences and the humanities, and enhance collaborative work between scholars in France and west Africa.Ĭaron and his mostly Nigerian colleagues prefer to call the language Naija Languej, arguing that the term Pidgin or the alternative 'broken English' are either inaccurate or derogatory. Which will include an alphabet, a comprehensive dictionary, a standard guide to orthography and an authoritative history of the language. That is what the Naija Languej Akademi is seeking to change by creating the first reference guide for Pidgin English, Everyone uses Pidgin to serve their purpose, but no one looks out for it. Public announcements and information campaigns are often made in Pidgin, which has a wider reach than standard English, the official language of this former British colony.īut while Nigerian Pidgin first emerged nearly 600 years ago, when trade with Europe was first established in the Niger Delta, and is now estimated to be used by 50 million people, and with variants spoken in Ghana, Liberia and Sierra Leone, the language still has no standard rules for spelling, grammar or an official dictionary.Īs a Nigerian linguist once put it, ' Na like pikin we no get papa, we no get mama' (It is like a child without a father or mother). In a country with wide disparity in education provision, Pidgin operates as a de facto lingua franca, a bridge between social classes, ethnicities and educational levels. Long considered the language of the uneducated, Nigerian Pidgin English, with its oscillating tones and playful imagery, is now spoken by Nigerians of every age, social class and regional origin.

The station's newsreaders report on the impending monsoon in south-east Asia: ' Dem dey run comot for dem house' (People are fleeing their homes). His source of news is Wazobia FM, the first radio station in Nigeria to broadcast in Pidgin and registering huge audiences as a result.

Learn to speak nigerian pidgin