Fluency will reduce how much you have to pay for cab fares or market tomatoes. Nigerians have almost always been the largest non-Ghanaian population in Ghana and we share many Pidgin words, but my siblings’ time at school also coincided with Nigeria’s cultural dominance across the continent through its music and film industries. My younger siblings who attended the same schools a decade later would instead use, ibi yawa, which sounds suspiciously like Hausa. At the same time, changes in Pidgin, compared to a rather static English, always point to wider demographic and societal trends.įor example in my secondary school days in the late 90s, we would say “that thing be deft” to describe something as being rubbish.
Changes in Pidgin, compared to a rather static English, always point to wider demographic and societal trendsĭespite the best attempts of generations of educators to stop its use, speaking Pidgin – as well as English – remains the best proof that you attended the ethnic melting pots that are west African secondary schools.
To date, English is still the language of white-collar African employment. The education system the colonialists created used English as a tool to “civilize” Africans, suppressing local language and culture and creating a hierarchy that put those who spoke English well – and best parroted British culture – at the top. To date, “I dey” can mean anything from “I am here” or “I am waiting” to a statement about the victory of one’s continued existence: “I am still here”. Combining basic nautical English vocabulary (itself derived from regional English variations) with the grammar and composition of languages of the various ethnic groups British traders encountered, it stripped things to the bare necessities: “I am going out, but I will be right back”, for example, became “I dey go come”. West African Pidgin began in the late 17th and 18th centuries as a simple trade language between Europeans and Africans.
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