HISTORY OF CREOLE (PIDGIN )ENGLISH IN AFRICA

      WEST AFRICAN PIDGIN also known as Guinea Coast Creole English is an English based pidgin and a Creole language spoken as a lingua franca across Nigeria and beyond. Commonly referred to as Brokin, it is often not considered a Creole language since most speakers are not native speakers, although many children do learn it early. It is said that Nigerian Pidgin is a language of approximately 3 to 5 million people and is a second language to at least another 75 million. 


Variations of Pidgin are also spoken across West Africa in countries such as Equatorial Guinea, Ghana, Sierra Leone and Cameroon. Pidgin English despite its common use throughout the countries has no official status. West African Pidgin English arose during the period when the British dominated the Atlantic slave trade in the late 17th and 18th centuries, ultimately exporting more slaves to the Americas than all the other European nations combined. During this period, English-speaking sailors and slave traders were in constant contact with African villagers and long-distance traders along thousands of miles of West African coastline.

 Africans who picked up elements of Pidgin English for purposes of trade with Europeans along the coast probably took the language from the river systems and trade routes into the interior where other Africans who may never have seen a white man adopted it as a useful device for trade along the rivers.

The African Pidgin in the various countries of West Africa share similarities to the various dialects of English found in the Caribbean. Some of the returning descendants of slaves returned to the New World of West Africa with many words and phrases from the Jamaican Creole also known as Jamaican Patois or Patois and the other Creole languages of the West Indies, which are components of Nigerian Pidgin. The pronunciation and accents often differ a great deal, mainly due to the extremely diverse mix of African languages present in the West Indies. However, if spoken slowly, the Creole languages of West Africa are for the most part mutually intelligible with the Creole languages of the Caribbean. 

The presence of repetitious phrases in Jamaican Creole such as su-su gossip and pyaa-pyaa (sickly) mirror the presence of such phrases as koro-koro (clear vision), yama-yama (disgusting), and doti-doti (garbage) in the West Africa versions. Furthermore, the use of the words of West African origin in Jamaican Patois display some interesting similarities between the English pidgins and Creoles of West Africa and the English pidgins and Creoles of the West Indies. For example, unu or wuna (you people) in Jamaican Patois is a word that comes from the Igbo word unu also meaning you people. Being derived partly from the present day Edo-Delta area of Nigeria, there are still some leftover words from the Portuguese and Spanish languages in Pidgin English since the Portuguese and Spanish trade ships traded slaves from the Bight of Benin. For example, you sabi do am? means do you know how to do it? Sabi means to know as Saber in Portuguese and Spanish means to know or to know how to.
it is officially used in countries like seirra leone and liberia respectively