Conversely, one major problem identified with NPE is that it:įalls short in the area of conventional orthographic and is yet to have standardized morphemic and phonetic symbols. Yet, while English has to be learned primarily in the classroom, NPE can be learned either naturally as a first language or knowingly, through casual communication with speakers on the streets. When Nigeria was finally colonized by the British, NPE was developed and substituted for English language.Ī study which examines the origins of NPE confirms that “it arose from the urgent communication needs of the contact between the visiting Europeans and their multi-lingual Nigerian hosts” (Elugbue & Omanor, 1991.

Historically, Nigerian Pidgin English originated in the “initial interactions amongst Nigerian and European traders and European tour into Nigeria through missionary works”(Farcalas 1996).It is derived from several European languages mainly English, Portuguese and Dutch and various Nigerian languages. Pidgin English has been defined by The Random House Dictionary of English language (1987) (as cited in Olatunji, M.O., 2009) as:Īn auxiliary language that has come into existence through the attempts by the speakers of two different languages to communicate, and this is primarily a simplified form of one of the languages with reduced vocabulary and grammatical structure and considerable variation in pronunciation.Īs will be shown in this paper, the traits of Nigerian comedy includes the use of Pidgin English to cut across a diverse country like Nigeria making it extremely lively, entertaining and easy to comprehend by the literate and uneducated populace. Nigerian Pidgin English, henceforth referred to as (NPE) is presently spoken by more than 75 million Nigerians (BBC World Service) as their first or second language. There are other nonnative languages like English, French, Arabic, Chinese, German and Russian that likewise exist. Nigeria, a federal republic in West Africa, is a multilingual country with “an estimated 516 languages,” (Gordon 2005) each one playing a very important part in the community where it is in use.

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