Nigerians have long taken English, the former colonial language, and made it their own. Now, their unique brand of Pidgin English has gone mainstream with the announcement by the Oxford English Dictionary that it’s added 29 Nigerian colloquialisms to its latest edition.
The rapid rise of Nigerian pop culture with Afrobeat, a flourishing ‘Nollywood’ film industry and popular fiction by the likes of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie have brought Pidgin English – a mix of English, words from local languages and street slang – to a wider audience. It’s no surprise that this common language has thrived in a country of 190 million in which more than 500 languages are spoken.
Crash course
For those who haven’t grown up with the language, here’s a quick crash course:
When Nigerians say “see you next tomorrow” they mean the day after tomorrow. Ask a Nigerian what corrupt politicians do with state cash and you may hear that they’ll “chop it”, meaning steal it. And to confer, they “rub minds”.
As for the Yoruba name “Tokunbo”, this was originally the term given to a child born abroad but its use has been widened to include a wide range of imported items from cars to clothes and it’s now listed as an adjective!
Other words to know include:
- K-leg – knock-knees or a setback
- Barbing salon – as you may have guessed, a barber’s shop
- Ember months – the busy period from September to December
- Put to bed – give birth
- Mama put – a woman who runs a food stall
- Gist – a rumour
- Qualitative – meaning excellent quality
Notes accompanying the new dictionary explain, “By taking ownership of English and using it as their own medium of expression, Nigerians have made, and are continuing to make a unique and distinctive contribution to English as a global language.”
It’s nothing new
This is part of a well-established trend in which English is enriched by ‘borrowing’ from other languages. In fact, language experts estimate the English language contains “loanwords” taken from at least 350 languages. Over time, we gradually absorb words once considered “foreign” and adopt them as our own. Take these commonly used examples: cul de sac (French), kowtow (Chinese), tsunami (Japanese), aficionado (Spanish), fest (German for celebration) and intelligentsia (Russian), all of which appear in the dictionary. And how would we manage without schadenfreude – the word with no direct English translation that means to derive pleasure from another’s misfortune?
We may already have more than a million words at our disposal but around 1,000 new words make it into print every year, which just goes to show you can never have too much of a good thing! Let me know the ‘foreign’ words you couldn’t live without by commenting below and get in touch if you’d like help with your copywriting (sadly, in English only).
