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Nigerian Pidgin Broken | |
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Broken English | |
Naijá (languej) Naija | |
Native to | Nigeria |
Native speakers | L1: 4.7 million L2: 116 million[1] |
English Creole
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Latin | |
Language codes | |
ISO 639-3 | pcm |
Glottolog | nige1257 |
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. Coming into existence during the 17th and 18th centuries as a result of contact between Britons and Africans involved in the Atlantic slave trade,[2] in the 2010s, a common orthography was developed for Pidgin which has been gaining significant popularity in giving the language a harmonized writing system.[3][4]
It can be spoken as a pidgin, a creole, dialect or a decreolised acrolect by different speakers, who may switch between these forms depending on the social setting.[5] 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.[6]