We don land gidigba! ('We've finally arrived!')
August 22, 2017 10:04 AM   Subscribe

The BBC has launched a Pidgin English platform. The new platform is part of the BBC's plans to expand in Asia and Africa.

Pidgin English is an English-based pidgin/creole spoken by millions of people as a lingua franca in Nigeria, Ghana, Cameroon, and Equatorial Guinea.

A brief introduction to Pidgin English from the BBC. And some more commentary from Kobby Ankomah-Graham explaining why Pidgin is "so much more" than "broken English".

Buzzfeed has some reactions from around the web.
posted by damayanti (16 comments total) 23 users marked this as a favorite
 
Primarily an oral language, without a standard agreed written form

I was curious about this and TFA did mention it. I wonder how it will work as a read language.
posted by Miko at 10:21 AM on August 22, 2017 [1 favorite]


Wow this is awesome! Given how big the Nigerian market is I'm surprised this didn't happen sooner. Maybe I shouldn't be.

America has its own pidgin English, Gullah. Samples 1, 2. (I'd be grateful for better samples really, these two are mostly English with occasional Gullah.) And of course Jamaican patois is also an English creole; does BBC have a big presence there?
posted by Nelson at 10:27 AM on August 22, 2017 [2 favorites]


America has its own pidgin English, Gullah.

Also Hawaiian pidgin. And on googling there's a pidgin or creole in the USVI.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 10:53 AM on August 22, 2017 [3 favorites]


I get the feeling I'm going to fucking love this thread. Thanks.
posted by suddenly, and without warning, at 10:58 AM on August 22, 2017 [1 favorite]


I've been hanging out with a Nigerian guy and I love listening when he is speaking Pidgin on the phone with his family. It takes a little while for me to catch, but I get the general gist. When I was in Cote d'Ivoire, I was introduced to a Liberian guy as "Hey, this is Erin, she's American so speak to her in English." I basically caught none of his Liberian English (which sounded a lot like Pidgin to me, but I don't know whether that is the case or not), and he told the guys I work with, "She must be lying, she's probably German or something because she can't even understand my simple English!"
posted by ChuraChura at 11:05 AM on August 22, 2017 [3 favorites]


Altho some native Gullah speakers such as Clarence Thomas are still alive, the language is virtually if not entirely extinct. Hawaiʻi Pidgin (which is actually a fully-formed creole language) still has several hundred thousand speakers.
posted by koavf at 12:08 PM on August 22, 2017 [1 favorite]


The great Ken Campbell once staged a production of Macbeth translated entirely into pigdin. The line that's always stuck in my mind is Lady Macbeth's call for evil spirits to "unsex me here". This became: "Satan, takeum me handbag!"
posted by Paul Slade at 12:10 PM on August 22, 2017 [7 favorites]


Well, re: the Ken Campbell thing -

There's more than one "Pidgin English"; they often share the name "pidgin" because that's the type of language that they were perceived to be, but they developed in different regions, with different influences, and are distinct from one another. Bislama, which is what Ken Campbell used for his Macbeth, is spoken in the Pacific, whereas the BBC seems to be targeting West African pidgins.

As a side note, many languages with "Pidgin" in the name aren't actually pidgins. A pidgin is a simplified language that doesn't have any native speakers, that generally arises when people who don't share a language need to communicate with each other. Many pidgins are in fact creoles, which are fully-formed languages with native speakers. Creoles can develop out of pidgins.

Back to Ken Campbell, though - there's a lot to be uncomfortable about regarding his use of Bislama. His conviction that Bislama is uniquely simple and has no grammar is just wrong, and appears to be based on negative prejudices about creole languages (although he's taken these traits as a positive, apparently). Then there is the issue that appeal of the play seems to be based mostly on white actors dressing up as "natives" and the use of Bislama itself - i.e. treating the language and culture as a comic costume.
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 12:40 PM on August 22, 2017 [5 favorites]


yeah the buzzfeed coverage is nice. From BIGEAGLESBLOG, Man don go look una website sha & e be laik say na Oyibo una take write dat wan. De word dem resembul English pass we Pidgin or 'well I've been to your website and it sure looks like it's white people trying to write that stuff. Looks more like English than pidgin to me'

Since way before Independence Nigeria broadcasts radio and television news in the majority languages, Yoruba, Igbo and Hausa, and then in pidgin. As there are so many minority languages, speakers of those can be assumed to also speak any (or more) of the big four. Pidgin is pithy, condensed, sardonic and idiomatic, like many in-group indicators, and it's been the language of choice for comedy for as long as I remember, since the jokes work linguistically on so many levels. As well as being the lingua franca, especially between North and South. I believe Hausa, the majority Northern language, is a lingua franca across the Sahel for West Africa generally. I've lost my tongue for pidgin now, though I used to be more fluent.
posted by glasseyes at 1:26 PM on August 22, 2017 [8 favorites]


When I was in Cote d'Ivoire, I was introduced to a Liberian guy as "Hey, this is Erin, she's American so speak to her in English." I basically caught none of his Liberian English (which sounded a lot like Pidgin to me, but I don't know whether that is the case or not), and he told the guys I work with, "She must be lying, she's probably German or something because she can't even understand my simple English!"

I had pretty much the same experience with someone speaking Sierra Leone krio. Everyone was like, "hey, we found you an English speaker to talk to!" and instead there was embarrassed incomprehension on my part. I can do ok with most of the Caribbean English creoles, but the krio I've heard is next-level harder to follow.
posted by Dip Flash at 5:32 PM on August 22, 2017 [1 favorite]


Hi, dem dey call me ramix. I dey speak pidgin. You go fit ask me anytin.
posted by ramix at 6:04 PM on August 22, 2017 [8 favorites]


well I've been in eateries in the States where the waiter can't understand the english pronunciation of 'water' even though we're sitting there gasping with our glasses in our hands, so...Not casting aspersions no, not at all. J'eet yet?

I honestly don't understand the water/woder incomprehensibility, it's like a certain cast of vowels or tone of voice just don't make sense in the other dialect of English, so maybe there's something of that in Americans not catching pidgin at all, beyond any unfamiliarity with the particular words used.

posted by glasseyes at 5:20 AM on August 23, 2017


it's like a certain cast of vowels or tone of voice just don't make sense in the other dialect of English, so maybe there's something of that in Americans not catching pidgin at all, beyond any unfamiliarity with the particular words used.

I've only heard a bit of Nigerian pidgin so I don't want to speak to those specifics, but with the creoles I am more familiar with, there are also the issues of grammar and vocabulary as well as the question of pronunciation. (See, for example, this Peace Corps krio handbook from the 1980s (scanned PDF) for some nicely selected examples of those differences.) Krio, like the Caribbean and Gullah creoles it is connected to, has different grammar and vocabulary from US/UK "standard English" and understanding a creole requires knowing those structures, over and above the accent/pronunciation issue.
posted by Dip Flash at 6:27 AM on August 23, 2017 [3 favorites]


ramix, how does the BBC site seem to you? Are they doing a good job getting the subtleties right, or does it seem like mediocre machine-translation?
posted by LobsterMitten at 10:52 AM on August 23, 2017


It's actually pretty good. It appears on first glance to be based on Nigerian pidgin, which basically incorporates more words from the local Nigerian languages (Ibo, Hausa etc) whereas pidgin from Ghana steals from Akan and Dangbe languages. Let's translate then, shall we:

Ibi like all the big big ble (pronounced bleh, literal meaning, language, colloquial meaning "proper English") I talk before no, all i want say be that the BBC demma pidgin no, ibi Naija (Nigerian) pepol demma own, no be Ghanaman pidgin, but e no dey matter, all talk be talk!
posted by ramix at 3:01 PM on August 23, 2017 [5 favorites]


This 1989 grammar of Nigerian pidgin is a good overview, though it's obviously out of date for more recent vocabulary.
posted by likethemagician at 7:26 AM on August 24, 2017


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