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Conversion calculators : metric to english and english to metric globalrph.com | English-Polish and Polish-English medical dictionary by Medland - Polish... bioling.com |
Nigerian Pidgin is an English-based pidgin or creole language spoken as a kind of lingua franca across Nigeria that is referred to simply as "Pidgin", "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 language since most speakers are not native speakers, although many children do learn it early. Nonetheless it can be spoken as a pidgin, a creole, or a decreolised acrolect by different speakers, who may switch between these forms depending on the social setting(1). Its superstrate is English with Hausa, Yoruba and Igbo as the main substrate languages. Ihemere (2006) reports that Nigerian Pidgin is the native language of approximately 3 to 5 million people and is a second language for at least another 75 million. Variations of Pidgin are also spoken across West Africa, in countries such as Ghana, Equatorial Guinea and Cameroon.
[edit] VariationsEach 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 Yorùbás 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 Igbos 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.[citation needed] It has been estimated that well over 95% of Niger-Deltans understand and speak pidgin. [edit] Similarity to Caribbean dialectsNigerian 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 Creole (also known as Jamaican Patois or simply Patois) 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 Creole 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 Yoruba word "bosi" also meaning "proud") and "Unu" - Jamaican Patois or "Una" - West African Pidgin (meaning "you people", a word that comes from the Igbo 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. [edit] Connection to Portuguese LanguageBeing 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. [edit] HomophonesThe 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. [edit] Examples
[edit] Notes(1) Faraclas, Nicholas C., Nigerian Pidgin, Descriptive Grammar, 1996, Introduction. [edit] See also
[edit] Bibliography
[edit] External links
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