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65-532: Nigerian Pidgin , a pidgin derived from English, is mostly used in informal conversations, but the Nigerian Standard English is used in politics, formal education, the media, and other official uses. Nigerian English is similar to American and British dialects with the same spelling. There are three main dialects of Nigerian English: Hausa English (spoken by the Hausa ), Igbo English (spoken by

130-433: A loan word , loan-word ) is a word at least partly assimilated from one language (the donor language) into another language (the recipient or target language), through the process of borrowing . Borrowing is a metaphorical term that is well established in the linguistic field despite its acknowledged descriptive flaws: nothing is taken away from the donor language and there is no expectation of returning anything (i.e.,

195-445: 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

260-457: A New World English corresponds roughly with the period of colonization by Britain and afterward. Nigerian English became a nativized language that functions uniquely within its own cultural context. Nigerian English has long been a controversial idea in that the idea of a "Standard Nigerian English" (SNE) is difficult to establish, considering the fossilization that has occurred in the formal instruction of English in many regions of Nigeria, for

325-402: A lesser extent, Romance languages borrowed from a variety of other languages; in particular English has become an important source in more recent times. The study of the origin of these words and their function and context within the language can illuminate some important aspects and characteristics of the language, and it can reveal insights on the phenomenon of lexical borrowing in linguistics as

390-425: A low tone, whereas nouns, verbs and adjectives are usually produced with a high tone." In July 2019, Google announced its new Nigerian English accented voice for Maps, Google Assistant , and other Google products. It is based on work of speech synthesis created by a team at Google led by Nigerian linguist Kola Tubosun . In January 2020, Oxford English Dictionary added over two dozen new words of Nigerian English to

455-524: A method of enriching a language. According to Hans Henrich Hock and Brian Joseph, "languages and dialects ... do not exist in a vacuum": there is always linguistic contact between groups. The contact influences what loanwords are integrated into the lexicon and which certain words are chosen over others. In some cases, the original meaning shifts considerably through unexpected logical leaps, creating false friends . The English word Viking became Japanese バイキング ( baikingu ), meaning "buffet", because

520-400: A more nativisitic lifestyle, returning to the predominant speech of indigenous languages of Nigeria. However, the nature of the introduction and the role of English in exerting the values of colonization on a post-colonial Nigeria have caused some to call English inseparable from the nature of language in the region. There are three basic subsets of innovations that have occurred as a result of

585-423: A political tinge: right-wing publications tend to use more Arabic-originated words, left-wing publications use more words adopted from Indo-European languages such as Persian and French, while centrist publications use more native Turkish root words. Almost 350 years of Dutch presence in what is now Indonesia have left significant linguistic traces. Though very few Indonesians have a fluent knowledge of Dutch,

650-403: A review of Gneuss's (1955) book on Old English loan coinages, whose classification, in turn, is the one by Betz (1949) again. Weinreich (1953: 47ff.) differentiates between two mechanisms of lexical interference, namely those initiated by simple words and those initiated by compound words and phrases. Weinreich (1953: 47) defines simple words "from the point of view of the bilinguals who perform

715-766: A search interface in Pidgin. In 2017, BBC started BBC News Pidgin to provide services in Pidgin. Many of the 250 or more ethnic groups in Nigeria can converse in the language, though many speakers will use words from their native tongues. For example: Nigerian Pidgin also varies from place to place. Dialects of Nigerian Pidgin may include the Sapele - Warri - Ughelli dialect that has majorly influenced large parts of Nigeria , Benin City dialect that has its influence from Bini language , Port Harcourt dialect that has elements of

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780-535: A separation mainly on spelling is (or, in fact, was) not common except amongst German linguists, and only when talking about German and sometimes other languages that tend to adapt foreign spellings, which is rare in English unless the word has been widely used for a long time. According to the linguist Suzanne Kemmer, the expression "foreign word" can be defined as follows in English: "[W]hen most speakers do not know

845-555: A sort of colloquialism that is spoken in English but has a unique cultural meaning. These are also especially prolific in Nigerian English. Compared to loanwords, coinages typically have a short lifespan and are adopted for unique cultural purposes of the present, and as such, die out quickly after their acquisition. Examples are provided by Abdullahi-Idiagbon and Olaniyi: Coinages are not the same as acronyms , though Nigerian English also has unique acronyms. Acronyms serve

910-401: A variety of factors largely including "interference, lack of facilities, and crowded classrooms". Contact between British Standard English and Nigerian English, which have two very different sets of grammatical, pronunciation, and spelling rules has caused there to arise a predominant occurrence of "faulty analogy", the assumption that because one grammatical feature resembles another in usage,

975-420: A variety of functions, and follow the same rules as Standard English acronyms: the first letters are taken from each word in a phrase (especially titles of office, agencies of the government, etc.). The study of semantics is, overall, a general study of the meaning of words. A common example of semantic shift is in the reappropriation of the meaning of English words for Nigerian purposes and uses. This can cause

1040-452: A variety of ways. The studies by Werner Betz (1971, 1901), Einar Haugen (1958, also 1956), and Uriel Weinreich (1963) are regarded as the classical theoretical works on loan influence. The basic theoretical statements all take Betz's nomenclature as their starting point. Duckworth (1977) enlarges Betz's scheme by the type "partial substitution" and supplements the system with English terms. A schematic illustration of these classifications

1105-735: A wide range of backgrounds (region of origin, current profession, social class, etc.). There has been special focus on such regions as those pertaining to the Hausa, Igbo, and Yoruba, respectively. Nigerian English can be thought of in a similar way to American English in this approach: just as in American English, Nigerian English varies from region to region, and as such, phonological variables are realized in different ways in different regions. Some common features across Nigerian Englishes include: Early studies have associated Nigerian English with being syllable-timed rather than stress-timed, but

1170-480: Is given below. The phrase "foreign word" used in the image below is a mistranslation of the German Fremdwort , which refers to loanwords whose pronunciation, spelling, inflection or gender have not been adapted to the new language such that they no longer seem foreign. Such a separation of loanwords into two distinct categories is not used by linguists in English in talking about any language. Basing such

1235-540: Is sometimes referred to as Pijin or Vernacular . First used by British colonists and slave traders to facilitate the Atlantic slave trade in the late 17th century, in the 2010s, a common orthography was developed for Pidgin which has been gaining significant popularity in giving the language a harmonized writing system. 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

1300-466: 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. Loanword A loanword (also

1365-489: Is the word tea , which originated in Hokkien but has been borrowed into languages all over the world. For a sufficiently old Wanderwort, it may become difficult or impossible to determine in what language it actually originated. Most of the technical vocabulary of classical music (such as concerto , allegro , tempo , aria , opera , and soprano ) is borrowed from Italian , and that of ballet from French . Much of

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1430-483: 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. Nigerian Pidgin, like many pidgins and creoles, has a simpler phonology than the superstrate language. It has 23 consonants , seven vowels , and two tones . Nigerian Pidgin has been described as

1495-508: The Hausa rendering of it]. Although Hausa , Igbo and Yoruba happen to be the three main political entities of Nigeria (based on population-numbers), pidgin English , a local 'patois' that represents a casual variation of Nigerian English, is known to be far more characteristic of the South-South region of Nigeria than anywhere else in the country. It is more concentrated than

1560-604: 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 cognate is savvy .) Also, pikin or " pickaninny " comes from

1625-606: 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

1690-509: The English language include café (from French café , which means "coffee"), bazaar (from Persian bāzār , which means "market"), and kindergarten (from German Kindergarten , which literally means "children's garden"). The word calque is a loanword, while the word loanword is a calque: calque comes from the French noun calque ("tracing; imitation; close copy"); while

1755-513: The Igbo ) and Yoruba English (spoken by the Yoruba ). Nigerian Pidgin English is very commonly spoken in the South-South region of Nigeria ( Edo , Rivers , Bayelsa , Delta , et-cetera), and is spoken alongside the corresponding dialectical renderings of Nigerian English [which exists in mediated form throughout all of Nigeria and on a(n) anecdotal, social level are arguably far better-known than

1820-431: The terminology of the sport of fencing also comes from French. Many loanwords come from prepared food, drink, fruits, vegetables, seafood and more from languages around the world. In particular, many come from French cuisine ( crêpe , Chantilly , crème brûlée ), Italian ( pasta , linguine , pizza , espresso ), and Chinese ( dim sum , chow mein , wonton ). Loanwords are adapted from one language to another in

1885-610: The ʻokina and macron diacritics. Most English affixes, such as un- , -ing , and -ly , were used in Old English. However, a few English affixes are borrowed. For example, the verbal suffix -ize (American English) or ise (British English) comes from Greek -ιζειν ( -izein ) through Latin -izare . Pronunciation often differs from the original language, occasionally dramatically, especially when dealing with place names . This often leads to divergence when many speakers anglicize pronunciations as other speakers try to maintain

1950-421: The 14th century had the highest number of loans. In the case of Romanian, the language underwent a "re-Latinization" process later than the others (see Romanian lexis , Romanian language § French, Italian, and English loanwords ), in the 18th and 19th centuries, partially using French and Italian words (many of these themselves being earlier borrowings from Latin) as intermediaries, in an effort to modernize

2015-594: 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

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2080-429: The English phrase but also represents something from Nigerian culture. For example, the saying "goodnight, ma" can be said regardless of time of day and functions simply as an assumption that the person in question will not be seen until the next day. That has especially been noticed in Yoruba culture. As the literature currently stands, most phonological studies have analyzed a plethora of Nigerian English speakers from

2145-526: The Indonesian language inherited many words from Dutch, both in words for everyday life (e.g., buncis from Dutch boontjes for (green) beans) and as well in administrative, scientific or technological terminology (e.g., kantor from Dutch kantoor for office). The Professor of Indonesian Literature at Leiden University , and of Comparative Literature at UCR , argues that roughly 20% of Indonesian words can be traced back to Dutch words. In

2210-603: 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 pot") and anyi di na london (lit. "we are in London"). Other similarities, such as pikin (Nigerian Pidgin for "child") and pikney (used in islands like St.Vincent , Antigua and St. Kitts , akin to

2275-548: The Oxford Dictionary. In April 2024, Nigerian English gained attention for its stood out lexicon compared to other Englishes such as the frequent use of delve after a study by the Swinburne University of Technology analysing PubMed articles containing this word from 1990 to 2024 was highlighted by Paul Graham on Twitter who argued it as a marking indicator of text generation by ChatGPT . This

2340-585: The Portuguese words pequeno and pequenino , which mean "small" and "small child" respectively. 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

2405-631: The Romance language's character. Latin borrowings can be known by several names in Romance languages: in French, for example, they are usually referred to as mots savants , in Spanish as cultismos , and in Italian as latinismi . Latin is usually the most common source of loanwords in these languages, such as in Italian, Spanish, French, Portuguese, etc., and in some cases the total number of loans may even outnumber inherited terms (although

2470-465: 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 without secular education in core northern parts — Gombe State , Yobe State — of Nigeria. Nigerian Pidgin, along with the various pidgin and creole languages of West Africa , share similarities to the various English-based Creoles found in

2535-414: The ancestral language, rather than because one borrowed the word from the other. A loanword is distinguished from a calque (or loan translation ), which is a word or phrase whose meaning or idiom is adopted from another language by word-for-word translation into existing words or word-forming roots of the recipient language. Loanwords, in contrast, are not translated. Examples of loanwords in

2600-510: 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 present in Nigerian Pidgin, such as koro-koro meaning "clear vision", yama-yama meaning "disgusting", and doti-doti meaning "garbage". Furthermore,

2665-399: The dialect has thus far evaded specific grouping in either category. Milde and Jan-Torsten suggest that Nigerian English is closer to a tonal language , akin to other West African tonal languages, but rather than tones being associated with stressed and unstressed syllables, they are associated with grammatical functions. They suggest that "articles, prepositions and conjunctions tend to have

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2730-557: The empire, such as Albanian , Bosnian , Bulgarian , Croatian , Greek , Hungarian , Ladino , Macedonian , Montenegrin and Serbian . After the empire fell after World War I and the Republic of Turkey was founded, the Turkish language underwent an extensive language reform led by the newly founded Turkish Language Association , during which many adopted words were replaced with new formations derived from Turkic roots. That

2795-708: The language, often adding concepts that did not exist until then, or replacing words of other origins. These common borrowings and features also essentially serve to raise mutual intelligibility of the Romance languages, particularly in academic/scholarly, literary, technical, and scientific domains. Many of these same words are also found in English (through its numerous borrowings from Latin and French) and other European languages. In addition to Latin loanwords, many words of Ancient Greek origin were also borrowed into Romance languages, often in part through scholarly Latin intermediates, and these also often pertained to academic, scientific, literary, and technical topics. Furthermore, to

2860-713: The late 17th century, the Dutch Republic had a leading position in shipbuilding. Czar Peter the Great , eager to improve his navy, studied shipbuilding in Zaandam and Amsterdam . Many Dutch naval terms have been incorporated in the Russian vocabulary, such as бра́мсель ( brámselʹ ) from Dutch bramzeil for the topgallant sail , домкра́т ( domkrát ) from Dutch dommekracht for jack , and матро́с ( matrós ) from Dutch matroos for sailor. A large percentage of

2925-494: The learned borrowings are less often used in common speech, with the most common vocabulary being of inherited, orally transmitted origin from Vulgar Latin). This has led to many cases of etymological doublets in these languages. For most Romance languages, these loans were initiated by scholars, clergy, or other learned people and occurred in Medieval times, peaking in the late Middle Ages and early Renaissance era - in Italian,

2990-476: The lexicon of Romance languages , themselves descended from Vulgar Latin , consists of loanwords (later learned or scholarly borrowings ) from Latin. These words can be distinguished by lack of typical sound changes and other transformations found in descended words, or by meanings taken directly from Classical or Ecclesiastical Latin that did not evolve or change over time as expected; in addition, there are also semi-learned terms which were adapted partially to

3055-404: The loanword). Loanwords may be contrasted with calques , in which a word is borrowed into the recipient language by being directly translated from the donor language rather than being adopted in (an approximation of) its original form. They must also be distinguished from cognates , which are words in two or more related languages that are similar because they share an etymological origin in

3120-403: The meaning of these terms is reasonably well-defined only in second language acquisition or language replacement events, when the native speakers of a certain source language (the substrate) are somehow compelled to abandon it for another target language (the superstrate). A Wanderwort is a word that has been borrowed across a wide range of languages remote from its original source; an example

3185-553: The mixed tribes in Rivers State , Lagos (particularly in Ajegunle influenced by sizeable Niger Deltan populace); and Onitsha varieties that draws influence from Igbo language . Nigerian Pidgin is most widely spoken in the oil state Niger Delta where most of its population speak it as their first language. There are accounts of pidgin being spoken first in colonial Nigeria before being adopted by other countries along

3250-578: The nativization of English in Nigeria: " loanwords , coinages, and semantic shifts". A loanword is defined by the Oxford Dictionary as "a word adopted from a foreign language with little or no modification". Nigerian English has a plethora of loanwords that have no direct English equivalents but have rooted themselves into the dialect with a unique meaning. The examples below of prominent Nigerian English loanwords are provided by Grace Ebunlola (quoting them): Coinages, though similar to loanwords, function as

3315-443: The norm. Though the exact levels of Nigerian English usage are contested, one suggestion indicates there are four levels of usage within the nativized, but not indigenous English: The system of levels is only one of the proposed differentiations of the pragmatic realizations of Nigerian English. Because of the nature of its presence in Nigeria, the English language has been a point of contention among Nigerian residents who strive for

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3380-508: The original English meanings to be "shifted, restricted, or extended". For example, in some areas, despite the international meaning of "trek" having a connotation of a long distance or difficult journey, the Nigerian usage means "walk a short distance". A particularly expansive example of semantics in NE is the use of a variety of greetings. That stretching of meaning can change the meaning of

3445-468: The original phonology even though a particular phoneme might not exist or have contrastive status in English. For example, the Hawaiian word ʻaʻā is used by geologists to specify lava that is thick, chunky, and rough. The Hawaiian spelling indicates the two glottal stops in the word, but the English pronunciation, / ˈ ɑː ( ʔ ) ɑː / , contains at most one. The English spelling usually removes

3510-431: The part of the person saying it, but for all varieties of Nigerian English, it is used to express sympathy in a unique way, or to show empathy to whoever has experienced misfortune. "Sir" or the replacement of names with titles indicates respect and a high value for politeness. The tacking on of "sir" to another title ("Professor sir") illustrates a greater level of prestige than normal or an instance of being more polite than

3575-427: The pidgin spoken in the city of Lagos , which is occasionally seen as merely an urban-Yoruba-mediated version of Nigerian English. Warri , Sapele , Port Harcourt and Bini City are examples of major Nigerian cities where truly concentrated pidgin English is spoken, especially relative to others. Nigerian English is a nativized form of English. Like South African English , its nativization and development as

3640-470: The rules applying to the former also apply to the latter, in what Okoro refers to as "substandard" varieties of Nigerian English. A few features have united across communities that bridge the differences between different varieties even within Nigerian English, all pertaining to cultural values that are expressed uniquely in English terms. Two prevalent examples are "sorry" and "sir". The literal meaning of "sorry" usually indicates some sort of responsibility on

3705-441: The social setting. 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 . Nigerian Pidgin is commonly used throughout the country, but it has not been granted official status. Pidgin breaks the communication barrier between different ethnic groups and it is widely spoken throughout Nigeria. In 2011, Google launched

3770-485: 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. Being derived partly from the present day Edo/Delta area of Nigeria, there are still some words left over from the Portuguese language in pidgin English (Portuguese ships traded slaves from

3835-487: The transfer, rather than that of the descriptive linguist. Accordingly, the category 'simple' words also includes compounds that are transferred in unanalysed form". After this general classification, Weinreich then resorts to Betz's (1949) terminology. The English language has borrowed many words from other cultures or languages. For examples, see Lists of English words by country or language of origin and Anglicisation . Some English loanwords remain relatively faithful to

3900-486: The use of 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

3965-472: The way the name would sound in the original language, as in the pronunciation of Louisville . During more than 600 years of the Ottoman Empire , the literary and administrative language of the empire was Turkish , with many Persian and Arabic loanwords, called Ottoman Turkish , considerably differing from the everyday spoken Turkish of the time. Many such words were adopted by other languages of

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4030-655: The word loanword and the phrase loan translation are translated from German nouns Lehnwort and Lehnübersetzung ( German: [ˈleːnʔybɐˌzɛt͡sʊŋ] ). Loans of multi-word phrases, such as the English use of the French term déjà vu , are known as adoptions, adaptations, or lexical borrowings. Although colloquial and informal register loanwords are typically spread by word-of-mouth, technical or academic loanwords tend to be first used in written language, often for scholarly, scientific, or literary purposes. The terms substrate and superstrate are often used when two languages interact. However,

4095-695: The word and if they hear it think it is from another language, the word can be called a foreign word. There are many foreign words and phrases used in English such as bon vivant (French), mutatis mutandis (Latin), and Schadenfreude (German)." This is not how the term is used in this illustration: [REDACTED] On the basis of an importation-substitution distinction, Haugen (1950: 214f.) distinguishes three basic groups of borrowings: "(1) Loanwords show morphemic importation without substitution.... (2) Loanblends show morphemic substitution as well as importation.... (3) Loanshifts show morphemic substitution without importation". Haugen later refined (1956) his model in

4160-511: Was met with strong objection by Nigerians in his circle, further reports proposed this finding resulted from a large language model dataset outsourced to workers based in the country who write in this dialect. Nigerian Pidgin 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

4225-426: Was part of the ongoing cultural reform of the time, in turn a part in the broader framework of Atatürk's Reforms , which also included the introduction of the new Turkish alphabet . Turkish also has taken many words from French , such as pantolon for trousers (from French pantalon ) and komik for funny (from French comique ), most of them pronounced very similarly. Word usage in modern Turkey has acquired

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