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Nigerian English, also known as Nigerian Standard English, is a variety of English spoken in Nigeria. [1] Based on British and American English, the dialect contains various loanwords and collocations from the native languages of Nigeria, due to the need to express concepts specific to the cultures of ethnic groups in the nation (e.g. senior wife).
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.
As of 2024, there are 57 sovereign states and 28 non-sovereign entities where English is an official language. Many administrative divisions have declared English an official language at the local or regional level. Most states where English is an official language are former territories of the British Empire.
The official language of Nigeria, English, was chosen to facilitate the cultural and linguistic unity of the country, owing to the influence of British colonisation which ended in 1960. Nigerian Pidgin English , first used by British and African slavers to facilitate the Atlantic slave trade in the late 17th century, [ 244 ] has replaced the ...
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]
Several studies have shown the Edo language is the major African component that constitutes the foundation of the creoles of the Gulf of Guinea. How the language of the Edo people of Nigeria made ...
In Kachru's three-circles model, the "outer circle" countries are countries such as the Philippines, [84] Jamaica, [85] India, Pakistan, Singapore, [86] Malaysia and Nigeria [87] [88] with a much smaller proportion of native speakers of English but much use of English as a second language for education, government, or domestic business, and its ...
Nigerian Pidgin, also known simply as Pidgin or Broken (Broken English) or as Naijá in scholarship, is an English-based creole language spoken as a lingua franca across Nigeria. The language is sometimes referred to as Pijin or Vernacular .