Circle of fire

After the Portuguese influence in West Africa had ended the English came to Nigeria around 1750. In the beginning they concentrated on the costal areas, especially in the Niger delta, and therefore Pidgin English started as a special costal connotation because of the urgent needs of communication between the English and the natives. The Europeans that were in contact with the local population were in the beginning mostly slave traders. As the growing demands for slaves for the transatlantic plantations spread the slavers moved inland, spreading Pidgin English to the interior of Nigeria.

The European ships could be anchored for months off the Nigerian coast while slaves were collected and these places became trading posts for the trading ships. To communicate with the local people Pidgin English developed. Pidgin English uses English as

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The missionaries wanted to teach the local people about Christianity and to do that they needed to be able to read and write. For some people that had mixed parentage Pidgin English became a Creole. There was a certain status in being able to speak Pidgin English, and it was the only way to communicate with the Europeans, Pidgin English made an easy middle way to understand each other.

In the middle of the 19th century missionaries settled in Nigeria. Some of them made their way back to Nigeria in the 1840s where they became important members of the community, and therefore spread the Pidgin English. Today Pidgin English in mostly used in the South Eastern part of Nigeria, in the Niger delta where the traders first landed it is attaining the status of a lingua-franca, but it is also used in remote areas and among poor people and today it has developed an elaborate syntactic system. Pidgin Portuguese was already well known and it served as a model for Pidgin English.

Literacy became to the Africans a means to influence and status.

The Europeans and the Africans developed commercial relationships, the slavers got their slaves and the Africans got some of the western technology, and they learned how to speak and write in English.

From the slave ships some of the slaves had been liberated and they first settled in Sierra Leone, there they developed a pidgin English to communicate with each other, because they were from different tribes and did not share the same language.

When Nigeria established colonial rule they needed a medium for communication and Pidgin English was the natural choice, therefore Pidgin English penetrated inland at last, and places such as police posts, schools and universities were some of the places where Pidgin English spread to.

The mission educators taught Standard English but the Pidgin English were already well established in Nigeria as a form of communication between the black and white, and it served as a means of identity.

The social point of view is important to understand why Pidgin English developed in Nigeria. the base language mixed with one or more native languages.

Approximate Word count = 592
Approximate Pages = 2 (250 words per page double spaced)

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