In 2004, Nigeria’s president at the time, Olusegun Obasanjo, a former military general, banned a popular rap song, “Although some critics discourage the use of pidgin, its supporters say it represents far more than a language.“Young people are taking it and owning it, and creating an identity from it,” Ms. Ofulue said. English - PNG Pidgin Translator Translate English to PNG Pidgin. In Nigeria, the largest former British colony in West Africa, Pidgin thrived as more and more people interacted with the colonizers.As British English was introduced into schools in the region as a result of colonialism, Pidgin began to be viewed as a bastardization of the pure English that had been promoted with the help of institutions like the BBC.But as time went on, Pidgin evolved into a language of resistance and anti-colonialism, embraced by activists like Even after West African nations gained independence, artists used Pidgin to criticize their leaders. But the World Service has viewed this as a challenge, rather than an obstacle.“Because it mixes indigenous languages, it differs from country to country. Christine I. Ofulue, an associate professor of linguistics at the National Open University of Nigeria, who specializes in Pidgin, says it reflects Africa’s relationship with outsiders over the centuries, evolving from the language of the slave trade to a form of resistance and anticolonialism.Today, she says, it represents African pride, seen in the flourishing Pidgin helps bring together, at least linguistically, large parts of a continent carved up by European colonizers who were later replaced, in many cases, by corrupt leaders. For a complete control, you know the thing is that it's not even the English is not to control people. you understand we will always do what they want to do. The expansion, the BBC’s biggest since the 1940s, was funded by a British government grant of about 290 million pounds, or $380 million.In addition to West African Pidgin English, the … “It’s the language of the masses,” Ms. Ofulue said.She commended the BBC’s decision to offer the service, saying it helped remove the stigma attached to Pidgin, often derided as a corruption of standard English.West African Pidgin has its origins in the 15th century, when Portuguese traders were the first Europeans to reach the western shores of Africa, looking for copper, ivory and pepper, as well as slaves. BBC News Pidgin is an online news service in West African Pidgin English that was launched by BBC World Service in 2017. This has fueled debates among staff members over word choices: should, for example, an article use a word from Cameroonian pidgin, or from Nigerian pidgin, the most widely spoken variant.The team is also trying to pioneer a standardized written form of Pidgin, which is primarily a spoken language. There are no formal ways of learning it; people simply pick it up.In Mr. Ewokor’s dictionary, “adrenaline,” for example, is translated to “power dey pump for im brain.” Drunken driving is translated as “drunkaman driving.”Pidgin does have its own grammar, phonetics and vocabulary, linguistic experts say, and it has historical and cultural significance in West Africa.Dr. In schools, teachers warned students about the dangers of what they considered a “deviant” language.While Pidgin is looked down upon by some, the word itself is not derogatory. That pride belongs to us.”An article on the BBC website telling the story of a Tinder date gone wrong, written in West African pidgin English. “This is our creation. “It’s so expressive, it brings people together and reaffirms a shared African identity,” Ms. Labaran said.There are many variants of pidgin spoken across West Africa, from Mauritania in the north to Nigeria and English-speaking parts of Cameroon in the south, and the BBC said it is using a mélange in an effort to create some sort of regional standard. Used as a lingua franca in linguistically diverse Nigeria and elsewhere.The World Service’s site, part of its biggest expansion since the 1940s, is The exact number of people who speak Pidgin is unclear, but up to 75 million people in Nigeria alone are said to be proficient, with speakers of dozens of mother tongues in the country using it as a lingua franca.Up to 5 million people in Nigeria use it as a first language, with more speakers in Ghana, Cameroon, Equatorial Guinea and elsewhere.“It is a language that really unites people and cuts across all sorts of barriers – ethnic, regional and socio-economic,” says Bilkisu Labaran, editorial lead of the new BBC service.It is not an official language in Nigeria and has no current written standard, as it is mostly used in informal contexts. It was, according to the British tabloid The “poo-poo” article, as it became known, was one of the most popular by the British broadcaster’s renowned World Service, which recently added a dozen foreign language websites to its roster as part of efforts to capture a younger, more diverse and digitally savvy audience.“We’re reaching new audiences in a language that is popular,” said Bilkisu Labaran, who oversees the service in West African Pidgin and who grew up speaking it, in spite of her parents’ disapproval. This was revealed on Wednesday by Leanne Mcloughney during a BBC session on Women In Digital- How To Stand Out In The Crowd, at the ongoing social media week.