This made it easy for the merchants to conduct business on the West African coast. Previously called West African Pidgin English or Guinea Coast Creole English, it originated in the 17th and 18th century with Europeans started to expand their colonies on the continent.ĭue to the language barrier that caused ineffective ways of communicating, locals began combining English vocabulary and the different languages spoken by the ethnic groups the British were engaged with at the time. What many do not know, however, is that pidgin didn't originate from Nigeria like many have been made to believe.Īccording to the Oxford English Dictionary definition, Pidgin is a language "containing lexical and other features from two or more languages, characteristically with simplified grammar and a smaller vocabulary than the languages from which it is derived, used for communication between people not having a common language a lingua franca."īasically Pidgin English or broken English as it is popularly called now is the combination of English and local languages that makes it easy for people who do not share a common language to communicate. Pidgin English has been the main means of communication for the educated and uneducated in Nigeria and other West African countries for decades.
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