Is Pidgin English From Portuguese? - Culture (2) - Nairaland
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| Re: Is Pidgin English From Portuguese? by 0hekuru: 8:20pm On May 08, 2009 |
Point of correction, There is nothing like pidgin English. It is called PIDGIN! It is a contact language. |
| Re: Is Pidgin English From Portuguese? by tpiah: 8:21pm On May 08, 2009 |
0hekuru: other languages also have some type of pidgin which may go by a different name. Not saying you're not right though. |
| Re: Is Pidgin English From Portuguese? by ow11(m): 11:37am On May 09, 2009 |
All those in favour of Portuguese should identify 10 Portuguese words in Nigerian pidgin. Till they do so, Nigerian pidgin is an English based pidgin with words from many languages ( Nigerian and European). |
| Re: Is Pidgin English From Portuguese? by Pepeye(f): 2:05pm On May 09, 2009 |
Not the slightest idea |
| Re: Is Pidgin English From Portuguese? by meoo: 12:35am On May 10, 2009 |
It was common at one time in Benin City to speak pidgin portuguese, you wont find many ppl in benin city who speak it. Most are very old ppl |
| Re: Is Pidgin English From Portuguese? by SapeleGuy: 12:47am On May 10, 2009 |
This thread is funny. The english spoke pidgin english and the portuguese spoke pidgin portuguese obviously two different languages. no long story! |
| Re: Is Pidgin English From Portuguese? by waffigbo(m): 8:34am On May 10, 2009 |
O boy that na question? Arrange urself, abi u no know say na waffi invent pidgin throway , confirm |
| Re: Is Pidgin English From Portuguese? by GeorgeD1(m): 4:46pm On May 10, 2009 |
looks like it is  |
| Re: Is Pidgin English From Portuguese? by sjeezy8: 1:31am On May 11, 2009 |
YOU ARE MONKEY FOR THINKIN PIDGIN ENGLISH STARTED WITH THE PORTUGUESE WHEN THEY DONT EVEN SPEAK ENGLISH IN PORTUGAL, ehh hen das a anoda 1 THE FIRST PEOPLE WHO WERE COLONIZED BY THE BRITISH WERE THE DELTANS BECAUSE LAGOS WAS OWN BY THE PORTUGUESE |
| Re: Is Pidgin English From Portuguese? by gReenmAn(m): 11:44am On May 11, 2009 |
sjeezy8 made logical sense. How could the Portuguese have invented pidgin English, when they probably couldn't even speak English themselves. The natural thing would have been for them to have tried speaking pidgin Portuguese to the locals. Unless of course the English language was already well established among the locals before the arrival of the Portuguese. @ topic, I DON'T KNOW & CAN'T GUESS  |
| Re: Is Pidgin English From Portuguese? by grandstar(m): 8:15pm On May 11, 2009 |
Nigerian pidgin does have portugese roots. Apparently a word like sabi has its roots in portugese. I learnt as much in history. We should not forget that the people with the sweetest pidgin are the Delta people because they had the first contact with the whitemen (portugese) and others. Even today, yorubas say oyinbo potoki! By the way, a creole is basically pidgin that has its won culture. That is the basic difference. In the Carribean, you see indians from South Asia only able to speak creole. They cant speak hindi or any indian language i.e. Trinidad and Tobago and Guyana. |
| Re: Is Pidgin English From Portuguese? by na2day2(m): 10:03pm On May 11, 2009 |
grandstar: hate to burst ur bubble, the guys at the coast where the first contact with the whitemen not warri folks |
| Re: Is Pidgin English From Portuguese? by tpiah: 2:05am On May 12, 2009 |
The Portuguese seem to have entered through Lagos/Warri to Benin while further along the coastline the British and Dutch may have made first contact. The Dutch especially were coming from Ghana. |
| Re: Is Pidgin English From Portuguese? by three: 2:47pm On May 12, 2009 |
Re: Is Pidgin English From Portuguese? « #11 on: May 05, 2009, 07:49 PM » Quote from: iboboyz on May 05, 2009, 03:35 PM Nigerian Pidgin is an English-based pidgin or creole language spoken as a kind of lingua franca across Nigeria that is referred to simply as "Pidgin", "Broken English" or "Brokan". Nigerian Pidgin English was greatly influenced by the Saro or Krios who infused words like "na" into Nigerian Pidgin. It is often not considered a creole language since most speakers are not native speakers, although many children do learn it early. Nonetheless it can be spoken as a pidgin, a creole, or a decreolised acrolect by different speakers, who may switch between these forms depending on the social setting. Its superstrate is English with Hausa, Yoruba and Igbo as the main substrate languages. Ihemere (2006) reports that Nigerian Pidgin is the native language of approximately 3 to 5 million people and is a second language for at least another 75 million. Variations of Pidgin are also spoken across West Africa, in countries such as Ghana, and Cameroon. Voted best answer in regards the subject. Pidgin did not originate in Nigeria as stated above. There are variations spoken in most Anglophone countries including "english speaking" cameroon that are comprehendable by most parties. Its origins are Krio which is why till date there are similarities with West indies pidgin and West African pidgin e.g "Unu" vs "Una". in response to the above, it is my understanding that unless 'iboboys' wrote the corresponding wikipedia article - 'nigerian pidgin english' the contribution was an unacknowledged quote |
| Re: Is Pidgin English From Portuguese? by GeorgeD1(m): 3:53pm On May 12, 2009 |
sjeezy8: you don't have to insult people in order to answer a simple question. |
| Re: Is Pidgin English From Portuguese? by grandstar(m): 9:20pm On May 12, 2009 |
People keep making this mistake about pidgin. Pidgin or creole is a mishmash of several languages and also the corruption of their pronunciations. the history of languages spoken in the vicinity such as portugese in Delta or by american slaves decent in Liberia. In Nigerian pidgin or to be precise, where you are from influences i.e Yoruba land, someone will say " I wan chop eba" However, in Igboland, its " I wan chop garri" Nigerian pidgin has words such as wahala or abi. The 1st sounds hausa while the second sounds like the corruption of "se bi" in yoruba. And of course, the pidgin spoken in Sierria Leone will be konk becos its actually a creole, pidgin that has a culture and people behind it. It is the language or sole language of a people! |
| Re: Is Pidgin English From Portuguese? by sley4life(m): 9:37pm On Jul 01, 2009 |
No |
| Re: Is Pidgin English From Portuguese? by ezeagu(m): 12:08am On Jul 02, 2009 |
sley4life: Partly. |
| Re: Is Pidgin English From Portuguese? by ladykool(f): 1:49am On Jul 02, 2009 |
pidgin from portugesse plsssssss its not why do ppl make threads they probably already know the answer to?? |
| Re: Is Pidgin English From Portuguese? by GeorgeD1(m): 10:22am On Jul 02, 2009 |
it probably is-looking at the language critically |
| Re: Is Pidgin English From Portuguese? by JoseHorta: 8:42pm On Aug 12, 2012 |
Most W. African so called Pidgin English are secondary creole languages derived from Cabo Verde Crioulo. Crioulo was invented by the first generation of children (pikin) born in the island of Santiago by 1460 and became the mother language and the working and trading and praying language of the newly born Cabo Verde nation irrespective of skin colour, religion and social position. The lexikon of crioulo is 95% Portuguese, the grammar is neither Portuguese nor African it was invented by pikin. Only a small minority of children went to school to become priests and learned Portuguese. The inhabitants of Santiago received as a concession from the king of Portugal the monopoly of commerce with the African coast from river Sanaga (Senegal) to Serra Leoa, where thunders where roaring. The Bishop of Cabo Verde was in charge of the same West African coast. Cabo Verde was thus a success story of economic development. While speaking Crioulo they planted cotton, sugar cane and vine as cash crops, manufactured sugar and coloured cotton textile and bred horses among other things. They settled in the W. African coast to exchange their goods, to catechise and taught crioulo around them. Crioulo became the lingua franca like hausa today. By 1600 English people settled in Sierra Leone and brought with them Irish slaves and stayed until 1965. Crioulo was gradually relexified in English, adopted some Yoruba vocabulary and became Krio, which is nowadays spoken by 100% Sierra-leonians. At different dates Sierra-leonians speaking Krio where taken by English sailors, army officers and merchants as far as Ghana, Nigeria, Fernando Po and Cameroon where they taught Krio, as well as Jamaica where they served in the army and South Carolina, where they cultivated rice and manufactured baskets. Your question goes far back in history and has no simple answear. Up to you to investigate how your Nigerian creole developed from Krio keeping a few residual Portuguese words. For eventual further information, please, use my address soushort.joyc@mail.telepac.pt. |
| Re: Is Pidgin English From Portuguese? by Nobody: 12:37pm On Aug 14, 2012 |
The first pidgin English starte obviously from eastern Niger Delta by the coastal Ijaws of Kalabari, Ibani and Nkoro and taken to South Western Cameroon. Obviously the language is a mixture of French, English and Kalabari words. Food boku which means food plenty is a french and English vocabs sentence. Food and boku ( beaucoup ) Yanch that we call Butt is a pure french word Hanche which means butt or hips in French. Kalabari words in pidgin were Bo.. I dey go bo.. bo is a Kalabari expression. Minju sikima bo meaning please leave this place.. I dey here so tey you no come,,, tey in so tey is a Kalabari expression... A bo teh meaning I have come... mashy or muddy ground is said to be Poto poto in early pidgin and poto poto is a pure Kalabari Ijaw word.. YOU TOO WOR WOR meaning you are too ugly.wor wor is a kalabari word used for kids to let them know that certain things are ugly,bad or not good.. wor wor itself is from the word worrie meaning to make some thing look bad or curse. kini worlo means to insult some one or disrespect some one..Juju is a kalabari word which is actually djoodjoo meaning being in trance so as to act a fool.. E djoodjoo teh means you have become confused or been in trance.. now djoodjoo is used when some one is possesed or influenced or intoxicated and so is acting a fool.. to do Juju is to cause this action. to make people be in a state of trance. the juju making process is to sing music in a jazz procession and drinking heavy booz where people go in trance or become intoxicated and hence have become djoodjoo. It is then said djoodjoo is made or juju is made.. I can go on and on and on. Ofcourse.. The first Europeans both Portuguese, Dutch and British met the coastal people first. Naturally interaction would take place and it would not be by sign language forever. The natives would try to speak the white mans language and from that process the pidgin language was born. Kalabaris SPOKE PIDGIN FOR A LONG TIME BEFORE the first Igbo person met the white man. STUDY BERBICE DUTCH LANGUAGE a language that was spoken by the Guyanese people and parts of surinam. BERBICE DUTCH WAS A MIXTURE OF kalabari , dutch and arawak languages.. google it and see. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5PH1TvEE8Vw 1 Like |
| Re: Is Pidgin English From Portuguese? by ezotik: 3:30pm On Aug 14, 2012 |
killayut: Yanch that we call Butt is a pure french word Hanche which means butt or hips in French. hmmm... interesting. killayut: Kalabaris SPOKE PIDGIN FOR A LONG TIME BEFORE the first Igbo person met the white man. una sabi find trouble do u know the origin of 'una' and 'sabi'? |
| Re: Is Pidgin English From Portuguese? by ezeagu(m): 6:09pm On Aug 14, 2012 |
Igbo (una, you plural) and Portuguese (saber, know). By the way Juju is from French Joujou meaning toy and poto poto is found in other language including mkpoto mkpoto from Igbo. |
| Re: Is Pidgin English From Portuguese? by onuwaje(m): 9:37pm On Aug 14, 2012 |
As a confirmed warri boy I grew up believin that d poruguese brought it to the niger delta and since they made ccontact with the people there particularly in present day warri delta state xo I have every reason to believe it started from warri......... I REP WARRI.... Cos warri pidgin is the best in africa |
| Re: Is Pidgin English From Portuguese? by Nobody: 5:16am On Aug 15, 2012 |
ezotik: |
| Re: Is Pidgin English From Portuguese? by Nobody: 5:21am On Aug 15, 2012 |
The sentence nah wah oh which means wonder when some one is bewildered or surprised.. WAH in the sentence is a Pure Kalabari WORD. WAH means excess..when some one sees some thing that seems beyond expectation or some thing above board the person says Nah wah meaning the circumstance or event is too much.. Ye me wah tey....is kalabari meaning the event is beyond expectation or the matter is in excess.. |
| Re: Is Pidgin English From Portuguese? by Nobody: 5:30am On Aug 15, 2012 |
onuwaje: As a confirmed warri boy I grew up believin that d poruguese brought it to the niger delta and since they made ccontact with the people there particularly in present day warri delta state xo I have every reason to believe it started from warri......... I REP WARRI.... Cos warri pidgin is the best in africa Warri people even use Kalabari words in their pidgin... the word kurusu which mean Canon used in WARRI in their pidgin is pure Kalabari.. Kurusu is Canon in Kalabari BUT kalabari people will not even say Kurusu when speaking pidgin.they say Canon.. In warri they also use the word Koso for the game Top and KOSO is a KALABARI top game where they use a type of Sea shell, carved specially and spinned, while it is spinning you cut the base to tumble tthe shell.If it tumbles upside down and rests with the cone side you win and play again..Warri use it in their pidgin and the KALABARIS DO NOT EVEN USE IT IN PIDGIN but It is a KALABARI game. WARRI is not even mentioned in the TRADING STATES OF NIGER DELTA history.. Meaning there was perhaps no WARRI even at that time. WARRI STARTED WHEN pORT HARCOURT was founded. There was no WARRI in The 15th century. |
| Re: Is Pidgin English From Portuguese? by Nobody: 5:37am On Aug 15, 2012 |
ezeagu: Igbo (una, you plural) and Portuguese (saber, know). Juju is a Kalabari word... when some one looks or behaves stupid and seems to be confused he or she is in a state of Juju. The real word is djoodjoo.. During JAZZ session which is also a KALABARI spiritism session, They chant to invoke the spirit and do libation with strong alcohol locally brewed called kaikai. The chant or music played make certain people be possessed .WHEN THAT happens then the person has started to djoodjoo... The act of making that happen is what they call to DO DJOODJOO hence to conjure JUJU..It is the original KALABARI culture mainly by the SEKI APU or AKASO cult but also by other water spirit worshipers. To do Juju was from that ceremony. |
| Re: Is Pidgin English From Portuguese? by Nobody: 5:46am On Aug 15, 2012 |
People should not forget that when Europeans came they did not come by plane, They did not come by speed boat and they did not come by Cars. They came by Big heavy boats. The boats could not sail in to the River hinter land and creeks to reach the forest region of the hinter land and so they used the Coastal dwellers who were mainly the KALABARIS at that time.. AND that encounter did not last for only hours. they had established relationship with the coastal dwellers for years before they discovered other people from the hinter land.The people from the hinter land perhaps never even knew about the existence of an ocean. And Europeans and the coastal dwellers never used sign language through out. the attempt to speak the European language perhaps as soon as encounter was made was the begining of the adulterated form of speaking the European language. So it makes sense to say that the KALABARIS started pidgin English.. Berbice dutch is a typical evidence. |
| Re: Is Pidgin English From Portuguese? by Nobody: 5:51am On Aug 15, 2012 |
Me I dey go bo... Bo is the early form and still used in some parts of Naija but still used in Sierra Leone KRIO and even in Cameroonian pidgin. In Nigeria the Yoruba word Jor or jare is fast replacing Bo... the word Bo is a typical Kalabari word and usage in Kalabari.. Iweriso bo is kalabari for leave me alone. bo, tiye paka... Bo, wetin dey happen ? |
| Re: Is Pidgin English From Portuguese? by PhysicsQED(m): 6:45am On Aug 15, 2012 |
killayut: "World’s Greatest Dictionary Still Gives Wrong Source The Oxford English Dictionary maintains an old British racist etymology that they seem wedded to, even in the face of modern comparative linguistic evidence from the study of African etymology. The OED still claims the word juju was made up by Africans repeating a French nursery word for toy, namely joujou. This French word is an example of the reduplication of a root that occurs in many Western languages’ nursery words. Jou is the singular imperative of jouer ‘to play.’ So the word for toy means literally ‘play, play’, precisely what a parent offering an infant a new toy might have said long ago. Compare for similarity in using reduplication the English nursery toilet words: poopoo, kaka and doodoo. Surprise! There is an African Origin of This African Word! The problem is: there is a perfectly cogent African etymology for the word. Consider the Hausa word for fetish or bad spirit, djudju, with its root not in French. O, for goodness’ sake, wake up, OED! The word was on African tongues centuries before French imperialists showed up in Africa to mess everything up! Hausa, by the way, is one of the principal languages of Nigeria, spoken by nearly twenty million people there, one-fifth of the population. It is also the language of an additional three million people in Niger. Hausa is a Chadic language in the Afro-Asiatic language family. The word juju was noted in English as long ago as 1894 in a book about West Africa. In the Yoruba language jù means ‘to throw.’ The general West African root is the Chadic etymon ju ‘throw,’ so that juju is ‘throw-throw’ because the amulet was tossed by the witch doctor or thrown from hand to hand as he induced the powerful spirit to enter the object. Then the fetish was thrown on the ground in front of the person seeking a magically charged object. The witch doctor also throws the juju power into a waiting object with his potent spell. If it were a fortune telling, the sorcerer foretold his fate from the way the juju landed in front of the fortune-seeker. For other nefarious purposes, the seeker might also take the object away and use it to perform evil upon another person." |
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