Nigerian Pidgin
pidgin
Nigerian Pidgin is an Indo-European language spoken in Nigeria, by about 47.5 million people.
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Nigerian Pidgin or NPE, also known simply as Pidgin, Broken or as Naijá in scholarship, is an English-based creole language spoken as a lingua franca or vehicular language across Nigeria coming into existence during the 17th and 18th centuries as a result of contact between colonizing Britons and African slavers involved in the Atlantic slave trade. The language is sometimes referred to as Pijin or Vernacular, and it has over time become the speech form with the widest geographical coverage and largest amount of speakers in Nigeria besides English.
It is the largest of the various varieties/registers of West African/Guinea coast creoles and can be spoken as a dialect 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 Benin, Ghana, and Cameroon.
From Wikipedia · Nigerian Pidgin · CC BY-SA 4.0
Written down
Everi human being, naim dem born free and dem de equal for dignity and di rights wey we get, as human beings, God come give us beta sense wey we de take tink well, well and beta mind, sake for dis, we must to treat each other like broda and sister.
Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR in Unicode).
Words in Nigerian Pidgin
| Meaning | Word | Romanization |
|---|---|---|
| child | pikin | |
| woman | wuman | |
| bone | bón | |
| tree | stik | |
| dog | dọg | |
| bird | bẹd | |
| snake | snek | |
| one | wọ́n | |
| two | tu | |
| three | tre | |
| four | fọ́ | |
| five | fáív | |
| I | mi | |
| who | hú | |
| what | wetin | |
| eat | chop | |
| die | kpeme | |
| house | haus | |
| money | mọní |
Most similar languages
Vocabulary
- Cameroon PidginIndo-European82% alike
- Ghanaian Pidgin EnglishIndo-European80% alike
- Sea Island Creole EnglishIndo-European71% alike
- PichiIndo-European69% alike
- KrioIndo-European68% alike
- Jamaican Creole EnglishIndo-European65% alike
Vocabulary compares 40 basic words (ASJP); grammar compares 195 features (Grambank). Similar is not always related.
Nearby languages
Elsewhere
Glottolog · nige1257 · Wikipedia (English) · Ethnologue · pcm