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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.
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 ...
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 .
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).
In 1553, the first English expedition arrived in Benin. From then on, European merchant ships regularly anchored on the West African coast, albeit at a safe distance from the mainland due to the mosquitoes in the lagoons and the tropical diseases they spread. Locals came to these ships on barques and conducted their business. [88]
The Efik language also borrows words from other ethnic groups such as Balondo, Oron, Efut, Okoyong, Efiat and Ekoi (Qua). [68] The Efik language was also spoken in several communities in Western Cameroon. [69] As of 1877, Alexander Ross reported that thirteen towns in the Cameroon region speak Efik and had an aggregate population of about ...
Igbo affixes to English verbs determine tense and aspectual markers, such as the Igbo suffix -i affixed to the English word 'check', expressed as the word check-i. [ 43 ] The standardized Igbo language is composed of fragmented features from numerous Igbo dialects and is not technically a spoken language, but it is used in communicational ...
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]