Nigerian Pidgin

Varieties

Nigerian Pidgin varies by location which also determines the influencing substrate language affecting the superstrate English structure resulting in varied flavours. Dialects of Nigerian Pidgin include; The Sapele–Warri–Ughelli dialect spoken in the western Niger Delta area, which is also sometimes grouped together with the Benin City dialect that has influences from the Bini language due to their geographical closeness and common features; The Port Harcourt dialect that has a mix of influences and elements from the mixed ethnicities indigenous to Rivers State and the eastern Niger Delta; The Lagos or Western dialect which is highly influenced by Yoruba lexical borrowings/linguistic elements and calque translations; and the Onitsha or Eastern variety that draws some influences from Igbo.

According to Obiechina (1984), Nigerian Pidgin English can be subdivided into five dialectal areas or variants;

• South West Pidgin – (Lagos, Ibadan, Etc.)
• South Central Pidgin – (Abraka, Warri, Sapele, Agbor, Etc.)
• Cross River Pidgin – (Calabar, Uyo, Ikot Ekpene, Obolo, Etc.)
• Eastern Pidgin – (Port Harcourt, Kalabari, Onitsha, Owerri, Aba, Etc.)
• Northern Pidgin – (Kaduna, Kano, Maiduguri, Jos Etc.)

Omamor (1992) however identifies only 4 varieties, viz: Lagos Pidgin, Port Harcourt Pidgin, Warri-Sapele-Benin Pidgin, and Northern Nigeria Pidgin.

Lexical items and linguistic sources

Many of the 250 or more ethnic groups in Nigeria can converse in the language, though many speakers will infuse words from their native tongues. As such, there are numerous words of both Nigerian and other West African origins in Nigerian pidgin. There are also words of Non African origin. For example:

Nigerian Pidgin is most widely spoken in the oil-rich Niger Delta region, especially in the western sections (Warri-Sapele axis) where a lot of the population now speak it as a first language due to the region's high linguistic diversity and the lack of an indigenous lingua franca. There was heterogeneity all along Nigeria's coastal belt except for the western coast dominated by the Yoruba groups, which facilitated the spread of pidgin there as a communication utility tool. There are accounts of pidgin being spoken first in colonial Nigeria before being adopted by other countries along the West African coast.

While Pidgin is spoken by many, there are wide swathes of Nigeria where Pidgin is not spoken or understood, especially among those with neither secular education nor exposure in the far northern reaches of Nigeria.

Relationship to other languages and dialects

Similarity to Caribbean Creoles

Nigerian Pidgin, along with the various pidgin and creole languages of West Africa, share multiple similarities to the various English-based Creoles found in the Caribbean. Linguists posit that this is because most of the enslaved that were taken to the New World were of West African descent. The pronunciation and accents often differ a great deal, mainly due to the extremely heterogeneous mix of African languages present in the West Indies, but if written on paper or spoken slowly, the creole languages of the Caribbean are for the most part mutually intelligible with the creole languages of West Africa.

The presence of repetitive phrases in Caribbean Creole such as su-su (gossip) and pyaa-pyaa (sickly) mirror the presence of such phrases in West African languages such as bam-bam, which means "complete" in the Yoruba language. Repetitious phrases are also very present in Nigerian Pidgin, such as koro-koro meaning "clear vision", yama-yama meaning "disgusting", and doti-doti meaning "garbage".

Words of West African origin in Surinamese Creole (Sranan Tongo) and Jamaican Patois, such as unu and Bajan dialect wunna or una – West African Pidgin (meaning "you people", a word that comes from the Igbo word unu or unuwa also meaning "you people"), display some of the interesting similarities between the English pidgins and creoles of West Africa and the English pidgins and creoles of the Caribbean, as does the presence of words and phrases that are identical in the languages on both sides of the Atlantic, such as Me a go tell dem (I'm going to tell them) and make we (let us).

A copula deh or dey is found in both Caribbean Creole and Nigerian Pidgin English. The phrase We dey foh London would be understood by both a speaker of Creole and a speaker of Nigerian Pidgin to mean "We are in London" (although the Jamaican is more likely to say Wi de a London and the Surinamese way is Wi de na London.) The word originates from the Igbo word di meaning the same thing and pronounced similarly: anu di na ofe (literally "meat is in soup") and anyi di na london (lit. "we are in London"). Other similarities, such as pikin (Nigerian Pidgin for "child") and pikney or pickney (used in islands like Jamaica, Saint Vincent, Antigua and St. Kitts, akin to the standard-English pejorative/epithet pickaninny) and chook (Nigerian Pidgin for "poke" or "stab") which corresponds with the Trinidadian creole word juk, and also corresponds to chook used in other West Indian islands.

Connection to Portuguese language

Being derived partly from the present day Edo/Delta and other south South area of Nigeria, there are still some words left over from the Portuguese language in pidgin English (Portuguese ships traded slaves from the Bight of Benin). For example, you sabi do am? means "do you know how to do it?". Sabi means "to know" or "to know how to", just as "to know" is saber in Portuguese. (According to the monogenetic theory of pidgins, sabir was a basic word in Mediterranean Lingua Franca, brought to West Africa through Portuguese pidgin. An English related word is savvy.) Also, pikin or "pickaninny" comes from the Portuguese words pequeno and pequenino, which mean "small" and "small child" respectively.

Nigerian English

Similar to the Caribbean Creole situation, Nigerian Pidgin is mostly used in informal conversations. Nigerian Pidgin has no status as an official language. Nigerian English is used in politics, education, science, and media. In Nigeria, English is acquired through formal education. As English has been in contact with multiple different languages in Nigeria, Nigerian English has become much more prominent and is very similar to both American and British English, and it is often referred to as a group of different sub-varieties. Although there is not a formal description of Nigerian English, scholars agree that Nigerian English is a recognizable and unique variety of English.

Phonology

Nigerian Pidgin, like many pidgins and creoles, has a simpler phonology than the superstrate language. It has 23 consonants, seven vowels, and two tones.

Consonants

Vowels

Tones

Nigerian Pidgin has been described as a tonal language, having a high tone and a low tone. The high tone can be written with an acute accent, and the low tone, though typically left unmarked, can be written with a grave accent. Additionally, monosyllabic high-tone words shift into a high falling tone before a pause.

However, this has been contested by subsequent linguists, due to variance in pitch intonation on lexemes, especially for questions. One rival suggestion is that Nigerian Pidgin "is something of a pitch-accent language in which, given a word there may be only one high tone, or one sequence thereof in opposition to one low sequence"; downdrift is attested in the intonational system.

Most written texts in Nigerian Pidgin do not show any tonal markings, and do not reflect any lexical pitch differences.