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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.
This is a list of languages by total number of speakers. It is difficult to define what constitutes a language as opposed to a dialect . For example, Arabic is sometimes considered a single language centred on Modern Standard Arabic , other authors consider its mutually unintelligible varieties separate languages. [ 1 ]
Nigeria has one official language which is English, as a result of the British colonial rule over the nation. Nevertheless, it is not spoken as a first language in the entire country because other languages have been around for over a thousand years making them the major languages in terms of numbers of native speakers.
Several studies have shown the Edo language is the major African component that constitutes the foundation of the creoles of the Gulf of Guinea.
Nigerian Pidgin is most widely spoken in the oil state Niger Delta where most of its population speak it as their first language. [10] There are accounts of pidgin being spoken first in colonial Nigeria before being adopted by other countries along the West African coast. [11]
This is a list of countries by number of languages according to the 22nd edition of Ethnologue (2019). [ 1 ] Papua New Guinea has the largest number of languages in the world.
Language World Africa Americas Asia Europe Oceania Countries English: 58 23 14 4 3 14 United Kingdom, United States, [k] Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, India, South Africa, Nigeria (See the full list) [78] French: 27 19 2 – 5 1 France, Canada, Belgium, Switzerland, Madagascar, Monaco, Haiti, Vanuatu (See the full list) Arabic: 23 ...
Tiv is a Tivoid language spoken in some states in North Central Nigeria, with some speakers in Cameroon. It had over 5.2 million speakers in 2024. It had over 5.2 million speakers in 2024. The largest population of Tiv speakers are found in Benue state in Nigeria.