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For example, Una dey mad in Nigerian Pidgin means "You people are crazy." [9] Unu has also found its way to Jamaican patois and Sranantongo (Surinamese Creole) with the same meaning as in Nigerian Pidgin. Igbo biko, meaning "please." For example, the sentence Biko free me means "Please leave me alone".
Français Tirailleur, a pidgin language [1] spoken in West Africa by soldiers in the French Colonial Army, approximately 1850–1960. Tây Bồi Pidgin French , pidgin language spoken in former French Colonies in Indochina, primarily Vietnam
The word aproko has two main meanings in Nigerian Pidgin: someone who pokes his/her nose into other people's affairs; gossip or rumour. The word is often used as a noun or an adjective, and sometimes as a verb. For example: That girl na aproko, she dey always put mouth for wetin no concern her.
Pidgin English is a non-specific name used to refer to any of the many pidgin languages derived from English. Pidgins that are spoken as first languages become creoles . English-based pidgins that became stable contact languages, and which have some documentation, include the following:
The word pidgin, formerly also spelled pigion, [9] was first applied to Chinese Pidgin English, but was later generalized to refer to any pidgin. [11] Pidgin may also be used as the specific name for local pidgins or creoles, in places where they are spoken. For example, the name of the creole language Tok Pisin derives from the English words ...
There are over 520 native languages spoken in Nigeria. [1] [2] [3] The official language is English, [4] [5] which was the language of Colonial Nigeria.The English-based creole Nigerian Pidgin – first used by the British and African slavers to facilitate the Atlantic slave trade in the late 17th century [6] – is the most common lingua franca, spoken by over 60 million people.
It is more concentrated than the pidgin spoken in the city of Lagos, which is occasionally seen as merely an urban-Yoruba-mediated version of Nigerian English. Warri, Sapele, Port Harcourt and Bini City are examples of major Nigerian cities where truly concentrated pidgin English is spoken, especially relative to others.
West African Pidgin English arose during the period of the transatlantic slave trade as a language of commerce between British and African slave traders. Portuguese merchants were the first Europeans to trade in West Africa beginning in the 15th century, and West African Pidgin English contains numerous words of Portuguese origin such as sabi ('to know'), a derivation of the Portuguese saber. [3]