'It's also something that will unite the country, a way of reappropriating English while asserting its own identity.' 'It's a language that belongs to nobody at the same time as belonging to everybody,' said Bernard Caron, a linguist specialising in Nigeria at France's CNRS research institute. Wazobia FM, and many other stations like it, has meant a new level of recognition for Pidgin and its many speakers.Īnd for once it is the well-heeled, well-educated community scrambling to catch up. In one of Lagos' renowned mega clubs, a reveller might be heard to say 'she dey kill me wit her mini-skirt o', meaning they love the garment. The English word 'kill is' reserved for a different context setting altogether. When used in a sentence, we have something like 'the man don delete', meaning 'the man has died'.'Īnd to commit a massacre is to 'do-badness-to-people'. 'A good example is when the word 'died' is replaced with 'delete'. 'I love to listen to the news in Pidgin English - mainly because it makes it less tragic,' added Nigerian blogger Uduak Ubak. Everyone with a minimal level of education understands us, and can be informed,' she said. 'But the truth is, not everyone is educated in the country, and we have so many ethnic groups and so many languages. The star host of the station's breakfast show Mayowa Lambe said she 'was struggling a bit at the beginning' to lose her English accent after years using the language. How could a broadcaster discuss serious issues in street slang, the pedants asked. When Wazobia FM, the first local Pidgin station, launched ten years ago, it was greeted with howls of derision by language puritans who predicted that the project would fail spectacularly. In all of these countries, Pidgin is becoming the lingua franca of cool.Īn oral language, Pidgin has traditionally thrived on the country's crowded radio waves, popularised by the music of the king of Afrobeat, Fela Kuti, and Davido, an American-Nigerian artist currently enjoying huge success.

Today it is spoken across Nigeria, where it traverses ethnicities and co-exists alongside some 500 other local languages, as well as in Cameroon, Sierra Leone and Ghana. The language has shifted and evolved uninterrupted since its inception. Pidgin takes inspiration from Portuguese, the first European language to reach Nigeria's shores, English, the enduring colonial-era language, as well as Jamaican patois imported by former slaves returning to the continent. Previously, Pidgin was considered a language for the impoverished lower classes. The project marks a shift for Labaran for whom speaking Pidgin at home while still a child would have earned her a stern parental rebuke. We expect debate with our readers on what Pidgin should be. 'There is no harmonisation - but that's the opportunity to have the conversation. 'We want to be pioneers in what written Pidgin can be,' she told AFP. Labaran and her 15-strong team, which includes web designers, journalists and social media experts, are seeking to transform Nigeria's use of Pidgin, under the banner 'make dem hear'.

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