From history,all of the world's greatest civilizations look at those things that make them unique & promote them to wider scales. The Nigerian pidgin has been our lingo here in Nigeria for eternity but it has no official constitutional recognition. I've been to a number of countries abroad & everywhere you see Nigerians,the chances are 9.5 out of 10 times we are all speaking pidgin. Even here at home in Nigeria,let's be honest most of us speak pidgin more often when we're with our friends & just hanging out.
I'm currently doing my master's in an EU country & the school has people from a wide range of races & countries. Yet, (I'm not being biased) Nigerians stand out & a lot of these people from these other countries are learning pidgin from Nigerians. Blacks,whites,Asians etc. As a matter of fact,there's even an Asian girl who now understands & speaks pidgin well just like a regular Nigerian.
We can make it an official language & call it NIGERIAN & spread some of our influence round the world. We can incorporate it into our currency notes,our tv news channels, a couple of our political offices & speeches etc.
Left to me,I would have even been of the opinion that we should scrap english completely but then again,english is quite an important language in today's world. But hey, we can have 2 official languages right? Pidgin being our national lingo & knowing english for the sake of international relations. Afterall some countries have even up to 16 official languages. Can we all discuss this?

Mods fp pls!

For me I dey enjoy pidgin o! Abegi

The Sierra Leonians should have more claim to pidgin English.

Yeah, you are right.

Sunny_bobo: The Sierra Leonians should have more claim to pidgin English.

That's not true. Sierra Leonean Creole which is similar to our pidgin is still a product of our pidgin. Remember we had our soldiers serve in Sierra Leone for years? Some of these soldiers got married to locals & so on.These soldiers definitely had been speaking pidgin & I'm sure that started to rub off on sierra leonean locals.
Even the Ghanaians speak pidgin now, but it's still all from Nigeria directly and/or indirectly. Remember there was a time Ghanaians flooded Nigeria & we were great buddies (just like we still are)? Well, on their way back to their country after staying here for years they already understood pidgin & they took it with them to their country which birthed pidgin in Ghana.

Please let leave it @ English, english make every thing official, pidgin welcomes touts into the office.

pretty_boi:
That's not true. Sierra Leonean Creole which is similar to our pidgin is still a product of our pidgin. Remember we had our soldiers serve in Sierra Leone for years? Some of these soldiers got married to locals & so on.These soldiers definitely would had been speaking pidgin & I'm sure that started to rub off on sierra leonean locals.
Even the Ghanaians speak pidgin now, but it's still all from Nigeria directly and/or indirectly. Remember there was a time Ghanaians flooded Nigeria & we were great buddies (just like we still are)? Well, on their way back to their country after staying here for years they already understood pidgin & they took it with them to their country which birthed pidgin in Ghana.

Bros, there is no argument about the fact that Sierra Leonians have more claim to Pidgin English than Nigerians.

Remember that the early slaves who were freed settled in Sierra Leone. These slaves came fr different tribes and used the creole/pidgin as a means of communication.

Nigerian soldiers just went to Sierra Leone 'yesterday'.

.

Sunny_bobo:

Bros, there is no argument about the fact that Sierra Leonians have more claim to Pidgin English than Nigerians.

Remember that the early slaves who were freed settled in Sierra Leone. These slaves came fr different tribes and used the creole/pidgin as a means of communication.

Nigerian soldiers just went to Sierra Leone 'yesterday'.

Freed slaves even settled more in Liberia than in just one part of Sierra Leone (Freetown )...Why don't we have this in Liberia?


Creole is different from pidgin (at least in the context of this debate). Creole is what they speak in sierra leone & not Nigerian pidgin. They only have similar elements & some of the words in Sierra Leonean creole are borrowed from Nigerian pidgin. Google pidgin & you'd see that the only African country that pops up first is Nigeria. "NIGERIAN PIDGIN"....before they start
branching off to tell you how a few more African countries speak pidgin. "Nigerian pidgin" is the only African "pidgin" defined and explained as a language on Wikipedia.
By the way, Jamaican patois which is the equivalent of Nigerian pidgin to Jamaicans is a form of Creole & yet is different from the generic Creole & is also very different from the Creole spoken in Sierra Leone. Do you see the pride with which Jamaicans flaunt patois & I think(I'm not sure tho) it has also got an official status now.

The day you can translate the phrase, "The exclusivity of an event" to pigin without losing its meaning, na de day I go give 100% support for wetin you dey yarn.

The day you can translate the phrase, "The exclusivity of an event" to pigin without losing its meaning, na de day I go give 100% support for wetin you dey yarn.

What u don't understand is modern pidgin is not "wholly pidgin English exclusively" it is a combination of good standard English and Pidgin English. To translate that emboldened word into modern pidgin would be something like this " Na the exclusivity of the event na im I dey talk about here" . Some people might beg to differ by saying " Na the koko of the event" but we must not loose the fact that Pidgin is not Pidgin French, or pidgin spanish but Pidgin English therefore from time to time pidgin like any other sub-major language would borrow expressions, idioms and prose from the mother language.

KnowAll:


What u don't understand is modern pidgin is not "wholly pidgin English exclusively" it is a combination of good standard English and Pidgin English. To translate that emboldened word into modern pidgin would be something like this " Na the exclusivity of the event na im I dey talk about here" . Some people might beg to differ by saying " Na the koko of the event" but we must not loose the fact that Pidgin is not Pidgin French, or pidgin spanish but Pidgin English therefore from time to time pidgin like any other sub-major language would borrow expressions, idioms and prose from the mother language.

Good try. I remind you that pigin is spoken in several West African countries, and that 'koko' has its root in Yoruba and is not a pigin word.

Consider this statement, a typical modern Pidgin speak, (Starts off with standard English)- " Yesterday I went to the shopping mall with my wife and kids ", Switch to pidgin - " na so I jam Emeka, the boy don hammer, come see bathing, I ask am which ones now", he was just smiling, saying (Emeka replying in pidgin) "na God oh" (back to standard English) I now said to him we need to talk, so I took his number and we went our different ways.

This is the way modern 'pidgin speak' is done, there is a constant switch between Standard English and Pidgin English for most educated folks.

@poster

Why do you want to speak and sound like a semi- illiterate officially? That's what Pidgin is and will always be. Or rather, a slang or for fun. Yes, we all use it, but seriously?

Its too bad we still answer the name (Nigeria) that a white woman dashed us and now you want to even go an embarrassing step further to forgo
all our national tongues for a mixture of what?

mens dept: @poster

Why do you want to speak and sound like a semi- illiterate officially? That's what Pidgin is and will always be. Or rather, a slang or for fun. Yes, we all use it, but seriously?

Its too bad we still answer the name (Nigeria) that a white woman dashed us and now you want to even go an embarrassing step further to forgo
all our national tongues for a mixture of what?

Pls don't get anything wrong. Noone is talking about foregoing all our national languages? Has english being our official language made us forgo our "national languages?" We are talking of creating an official central language created out of our many beautiful cultures and making it "NIGERIAN" while we still have all our other languages to ourselves. Start to create & document things in it & create a standard written form of it as opposed to your "semi-illiterate" thought of it. That central language so far so good is "NIGERIAN PIDGIN" which virtually all Nigerians understand & speak.
Google.com.ng has its pidgin version & as a matter of fact, that's what I use all the time cos I feel like nobody should sell my thing to me more than I can sell it out to other people. When we create pidgin "officially" or put it out there on a wider scale, we can even have computers,laptops,phones,electronics etc with the options of reading & writing in pidgin.

Not me and you!

And I no fit speak am sef.

speedyboi: Not me and you!

And I no fit speak am sef.

Guy u dey mad oooo

kajole:

Guy u dey mad oooo

how? Shey because i dey write in pidgin? no try am, you go laugh if i try speak am