killayut:

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.

Gaspar Cao visited Warri in 1555 (mid-16th century) and soon after the king's son was converted to Christianity. Are you suggesting that it was necessarily only around only after the 15th century just because it isn't mentioned significantly in one particular book on the trading states of the area that became the eastern region of Nigeria? That's a pretty weak argument.

Anyway, there are Ijaws in and near Warri and the Kalabari are Ijaw so it's not that surprising that there are some similarities here and there.

Pidgin is spoken in hawaii,jamaica and belize which all had english speaking colonialist..Hawaii pidgin is much different than naija but the pattern of brokeness is the same...Jamaica and belize is the same as the overall carribean style and it is very much different but still a british influence like naijas---Any country in the world where english speaking colonialist spent much time disgracing the locals language,the locals did adopt a form of pidgin which mimicks most of the worlds indigenous language grammar syntax but with english and other colonials words infused....The truth is that modern proper english is a for of Pidgin that mixes improperly the words of many different languages..The modern English only has to its credit as being the tounge of the ones who were the leaders in the world conquest and thereby in control of speech and thereby in control of communication and how people organize themselves---There is no language on earth that is not a form of pidgin from other older languages...

PhysicsQED:

"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."

I don't understand why the person who wrote this is offended that the word 'juju' has been claimed to have possibly originated in French, even going to the lengths of calling the dictionary racist. There are obviously other European words in pidgin and even as loans in African languages, so how is it impossible and how would it add anything to the French peoples ego that some random word in pidgin came from French when there are already hundreds of words that originated from French in pidgin.

PhysicsQED:

Gaspar Cao visited Warri in 1555 (mid-16th century) and soon after the king's son was converted to Christianity. Are you suggesting that it was necessarily only around only after the 15th century just because it isn't mentioned significantly in one particular book on the trading states of the area that became the eastern region of Nigeria? That's a pretty weak argument.

Anyway, there are Ijaws in and near Warri and the Kalabari are Ijaw so it's not that surprising that there are some similarities here and there.

Warri was an English creation. Then the Itshekiris were still at Ode Itshekiri And there was no WARRI city. Lagos itself was not yet a colony. Port Harcourt itself was founded in 1912 So where did you get the history of GASPER CAO visiting a town that was not existing. It was Awolowo who changed the title Olu Itshekiri to Olu of Warri and then the Olu stool moved to Warri. The city of Warri was first settled by the English . Gaspar Cao that I remember was in Sao tome as a bishop and he actually visited Warri kingdom in in 1555 . The kingdom was not Warri. Historians who were pro Itshekiri made it Warri . Gaspar visited the area and met the natives. The area was never and has never been an exclussive Itshekiri area and at that time the Warri was not an Itshekiri area but an Ijaw fishing settlement where OGBE Ijoh is today . The Itshekiri and their king then were at ODE ITSHEKIRI . But again that was after when Fernando po was already a colony and both Kalabari-Ijaws and Igbos and Efiks have already been taken there by the Portuguese when Diego Sam visited in 1493.

19naia: Pidgin is spoken in hawaii,jamaica and belize which all had english speaking colonialist..Hawaii pidgin is much different than naija but the pattern of brokeness is the same...Jamaica and belize is the same as the overall carribean style and it is very much different but still a british influence like naijas---Any country in the world where english speaking colonialist spent much time disgracing the locals language,the locals did adopt a form of pidgin which mimicks most of the worlds indigenous language grammar syntax but with english and other colonials words infused....The truth is that modern proper english is a for of Pidgin that mixes improperly the words of many different languages..The modern English only has to its credit as being the tounge of the ones who were the leaders in the world conquest and thereby in control of speech and thereby in control of communication and how people organize themselves---There is no language on earth that is not a form of pidgin from other older languages...

I think they are talking about Nigerian or West African pidgin. I hope you do know what pidgin mean tho. There maybe close to 200 pidgin languages on earth and Hawaian pidgin is one. Belizean black people were taken there from mainly Nigeria and other West African coastal areas. They were Nigerian , Cameroonian pidgin speaking Black people already before taken there so they took to Belize the Nigerian pidgin and some how over the years changes took place. In Nigeria itself pidgin has changed . The pidgin as spoken now was not the type spoken some 30 years ago and as more tribes speak it ,new African words are adding. Sierra Leonian pidgin itself was taken there by Freed Nigerian pidgin speaking slaves from the slave ships that were taken to Free town during the abolition of slave trade.

If this language has been formed by Yorubas or Igbos in Nigeria every one here would quickly make it Nigerian thing. Why are Nigerians like that ? Always trying to discredit others when they do not have the credit. Europeans met the coastal dwellers first and naturally interaction took place and the natives tried to speak the white man's language. The people that met the white people first started it and those where the coastal dwellers of the gulf of guinea. NIGER DELTA.

pidgin was the language of trade and a lot of it was spoken on the slave ships.

the slaves often stayed at port for up to three or six months [or longer] while waiting to be transported overseas, and during this period, they learnt to communicate in pidgin.

this would particularly apply to the ports outside lagos since their captors were english speaking.

sketchy details, but that's what i can recall for now.


Its very likely the language would have some portuguese elements in it, since the portuguese were very active along the coast? Probably started with the portuguese and later added input from other languages as the trade evolved.

.

tpia@:
What does pataki mean anyway?

Someone mentioned potoki as a synonym for portuguese in yoruba.

Not sure about that but pataki could be a loan word though i cant say for sure.

Can someone break down the meaning of pataki.

It means important.

.

killayut:

Warri was an English creation. Then the Itshekiris were still at Ode Itshekiri And there was no WARRI city. Lagos itself was not yet a colony. Port Harcourt itself was founded in 1912 So where did you get the history of GASPER CAO visiting a town that was not existing. It was Awolowo who changed the title Olu Itshekiri to Olu of Warri and then the Olu stool moved to Warri. The city of Warri was first settled by the English . Gaspar Cao that I remember was in Sao tome as a bishop and he actually visited Warri kingdom in in 1555 . The kingdom was not Warri. Historians who were pro Itshekiri made it Warri . Gaspar visited the area and met the natives. The area was never and has never been an exclussive Itshekiri area and at that time the Warri was not an Itshekiri area but an Ijaw fishing settlement where OGBE Ijoh is today . The Itshekiri and their king then were at ODE ITSHEKIRI . But again that was after when Fernando po was already a colony and both Kalabari-Ijaws and Igbos and Efiks have already been taken there by the Portuguese when Diego Sam visited in 1493.

When you said "Warri was an English creation" I almost stopped reading.

When I referenced the king's son being baptized, obviously I was referring to the Warri kingdom, an Itsekiri kingdom, which is synonymous with the place that is referred to as Ode-Itsekiri for whatever reason by some people nowadays. Warri kingdom = Itsekiri kingdom because that's what all the precolonial documents refer to the Itsekiri kingdom as. Simple. Now if you were referring only to the modern city of Warri and not the old kingdom, you should have indicated that in your post, since the rest of your post was talking about precolonial trading states, not modern cities.

tpia@:
Is it a synonym for portuguese is actually what i meant.

Ie did it originally refer to portuguese.

maybe you should call portugese embassy

Nigeria pidgin is derived from the krio. Which in turn was brought by freed slaves/returned slaves. It was taken to nigeria by missionaries.

It's likely it has portugese for the krio has portugese influences.

.

tpia@:




gosh, na oyibo fit you, because you're sort of "fast".

odi lo laju si sha.

Tpia@, you not only give me butterfly in my belly... you give me bumble bees too. Na you I like

.

ezotik:

hmmm... interesting.



una sabi find trouble


do u know the origin of 'una' and 'sabi'?

People from the island "Praia, cape verde" there criol language end in "i" in everyting... they use the word "sabi" too.

linda_1:



People from the island "Praia, cape verde" there criol language end in "i" in everyting... they use the world "sabi" too.

ohh weee, why am i not surprised that it is also 'sabi' in cape verde? when cape verdeans were created from negro egg and portuguese nuts..
so the portuguese origin of the word is confirmed.

ezotik:

ohh weee, why am i not surprised that it is also 'sabi' in cape verde? when cape verdeans were created from negro egg and portuguese nuts..
so the portuguese origin of the word is confirmed.

tpia@:
pidgin was the language of trade and a lot of it was spoken on the slave ships.

the slaves often stayed at port for up to three or six months [or longer] while waiting to be transported overseas, and during this period, they learnt to communicate in pidgin.

this would particularly apply to the ports outside lagos since their captors were english speaking.

sketchy details, but that's what i can recall for now.


Its very likely the language would have some portuguese elements in it, since the portuguese were very active along the coast? Probably started with the portuguese and later added input from other languages as the trade evolved.

Slaves were either already pidgin speakers or Yoruba speakers or Igbo speakers. They never learnt nothing in the slave ships and slaves were not free at any slave port.Freed slaves were already speaking a type of what ever language they knew and the pidgin speaking slaves FREED and returned to FREE TOWN took pidgin there. Slaves also spoke Yoruba in Brazil and even CUBA. early KALABARI slaves spoke a type of KALABARI mixed with Dutch and TWI in Guyana. English was the last and final colonial master in NIGERIA and so the pidgin became a mixture of the early Languages and the native language which was Ijaw. with time Igbo words got in to pidgin because a lot of Igbos have been involved. Yorubas never spoke pidgin because of their strong pro Yoruba mentality.

[quote author=0hekuru]Point of correction, There is nothing like pidgin English. It is called PIDGIN! It is a contact language. [/quote

Thw word pidgin does not define a type of English. Pidgin is English for creole. and it means mixture of European and African and different native languages.You better correct your self by checking the dictionary meaning of the word pidgin.

ow11: 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).

You are very correct. The Portuguese were the earliest to come followed by the DUTCH .The Portuguese influence can only be seen in the ways of the Ijaws of the east. In their dressing and family arrangement but not the language. The Dutch and English dominate.

waffigbo: O boy that na question? Arrange urself, abi u no know say na waffi invent pidgin throway , confirm

LOL. WAFFI is late and warrri itself was not mentioned in THE HISTORY OF NIGER DELTA TRADING STATES.

tpiah: 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.

The Portuguese actually entered the gulf of Guinea first and that was the present day Bight of Biafra or Bonny and that is home to the eastern Ijaws. Lagos was later.

This thread actually started since 2009 and I am just reading it and commenting . Funny

.

.

killayut, can you point me to an actual historical reference to this 'Diego Sam' who apparently visited Calabar in 1493?

I would like to see a real legitimate reference from a source that was written and published before the colonization of Nigeria.

PhysicsQED: killayut, can you point me to an actual historical reference to this 'Diego Sam' who apparently visited Calabar in 1493?

I would like to see a real legitimate reference from a source that was written and published before the colonization of Nigeria.

Because it has not been written by any one from any big tribe does not mean it did not happen. No one has ever written the relationship between my fore parents and Europeans But It happened. Go to Calabar and ask about Calabar history to know every thing about Calabar. One day an Efik person would pick interest and publish the history of Calabar that covers such events and whne that happens many people would doubt asking the same question you just asked.

tpia@:
What does pataki mean anyway?

Someone mentioned potoki as a synonym for portuguese in yoruba.

Not sure about that but pataki could be a loan word though i cant say for sure.

Can someone break down the meaning of pataki.

In Recent times there have been lots of Yoruba words in pidgin LIKE PATAKI which meaning I do not even know. Pataki was never a word in the beginning pidgin English language

tpia@:



the only way they would have entered the gulf of biafra first, is if they were coming up the coast from angola.


the gulf of guinea stretches from liberia to gabon.

You are right there. I think they reached Sierra Leone first but definitely Gulf of Guinea first before Lagos.

tpia@:



much of this is not correct, although i partly agree with some of your other posts.

some slaves were already speaking pidgin, but its safe to assume most were not, since remote villages were often raided for slaves.
there were large populations of enslaved persons along the coasts- initially most were waiting for shipment while later [after abolition], they were simply freed slaves, many of who did not return home, or went home then came back.

slaves brought to the coast, picked up pidgin because it was the language of communication both between the european slavers and their african counterparts,and the slaves themselves and their african captors. Also because they (slaves) werent always shipped abroad immediately. Marching slaves down to the coast took time,as did purchasing the slaves and inspecting them and the ships had to sail with a full hold. Also, once the ships were gone, fresh supplies of slaves would have to wait until it or another ship arrived from overseas.

what you need to look for/at is portuguese influence in kalabari/ijaw languages, from back then, if the portuguese were in that area.


yorubas did not have such a strong connection with pidgin mainly because of the portuguese (brazilian) factor, i assume. Needs to be studied further.

You are right. Many people do not still speak pidgin today even in the heavy pidgin speaking areas. What I meant was at least there were elements of pidgin speaking slaves in every slave ship taken away and those were the people that introduced pidgin in the Caribbean. The way Jamaicans pidgin pronounce their words especially the B and D is African and they say they do that because their founding fathers pronounced the words and letters like that and they claim it is West African accent. Only Eastern Ijaws pronounce B and D like that where the D in Do it would sound Gdo it as in the D sound of the Eastern Ijaw words Dumo (Life ) Duba ( Big ) and Buko ( Monkey ) Bo ( Come )