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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.
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.
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).
The English language is the lingua franca of Nigerians. [26] Nigeria is divided roughly in half between Muslims , who live mostly in the north, and Christians , who live mostly in the south; indigenous religions , such as those native to the Igbo and Yoruba ethnicities, are in the minority.
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, [ 243 ] has replaced the ...
English as a first language is only spoken by 259,678 people, as a second language by 182,717,239 and as a third language by 45,562,173. [4] Nigeria: 206,200,000 125,039,680: 60.64 20,000,000 9.70: 103,198,040 50.05: English is the most widespread language in the country due to the many different languages spoken, with 60 million speakers. [5]
Nigeria is famous for its English language literature. Things Fall Apart , [ 58 ] by Chinua Achebe , is an important book in African literature . [ 59 ] With over eight million copies sold worldwide, it has been translated into 50 languages, making Achebe the most translated African writer of all time.
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]