Wikipedia wrote:Nigerian Pidgin is an English-based pidgin and creole language spoken as a lingua franca across Nigeria. The language is commonly referred to as "Pidgin" or Broken (pronounced "Brokin"). It is distinguished from other creole languages since most speakers are not true native speakers although many children learn it at an early age. 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.
Variations of what this article refers to as "Nigerian Pidgin" are also spoken across West and Central Africa, in countries such as Equatorial Guinea, Ghana and Cameroon.
The BBC recently began a BBC Pidgin service for Africa. You can even listen to the news of the world in one minute in Pidgin: All di local and world tori wey you suppose know in 60 seconds!. Of course, one can argue that it is not a language but a "corruption of English" and my response would be that it is indeed a language and shares a relationship with English in a similar way as French does to its Creoles.
The New York Times wrote:...“We’re reaching new audiences in a language that is popular,” said Bilkisu Labaran, who oversees the service in West African Pidgin and who grew up speaking it, in spite of her parents’ disapproval. In schools, teachers warned students about the dangers of what they considered a “deviant” language.
While Pidgin is looked down upon by some, the word itself is not derogatory. More than 75 million people are thought to speak the language, either as their primary or secondary tongue.
“It’s so expressive, it brings people together and reaffirms a shared African identity,” Ms. Labaran said.
Reading it will probably be easier for language-learners here on the forum than listening. Here's a link to a BBC Video Subtitled Pidgin English sweet to talk but to read am for book na another mata "People ready to read book dem write for pidgin English so far as e get beta tori inside". The word "dem" (them) is similar to how the particle "yo" is used in Haitian Creole to represent the plural. It's also used in Caribbean English Creoles to represent the plural- "De tree dem all mashup/The trees are torn up".
One of the things I find interesting in the NYT article is that there is a nascent effort to standardize Pidgin by the BBC Pidgin service.
The New York Times wrote:There are many variants of pidgin spoken across West Africa, from Mauritania in the north to Nigeria and English-speaking parts of Cameroon in the south, and the BBC said it is using a mélange in an effort to create some sort of regional standard. This has fueled debates among staff members over word choices: should, for example, an article use a word from Cameroonian pidgin, or from Nigerian pidgin, the most widely spoken variant.
The team is also trying to pioneer a standardized written form of Pidgin, which is primarily a spoken language. There are no formal ways of learning it; people simply pick it up.
Chris Ewokor is helping the BBC effort by putting together a linguistic guide. “I’m creating rules that we never had before,” he said.
In Mr. Ewokor’s dictionary, “adrenaline,” for example, is translated to “power dey pump for im brain.” Drunken driving is translated as “drunkaman driving.” ... Although some critics discourage the use of pidgin, its supporters say it represents far more than a language.
“Young people are taking it and owning it, and creating an identity from it,” Ms. Ofulue said. “This is our creation. That pride belongs to us.”
