Nigerian Pidgin is an English-based contact language, i.e. an English-related variety with grammatical structures of its own that has been significantly shaped by contact with Nigeria’s indigenous languages. It plays a major role in the country as a means of communication for speakers of different languages that is also used in media, for example. Students who learn about Nigeria, e.g. in connection with the Abitur topic in NRW ”Voices from the African Continent: focus on Nigeria”, need to appreciate that it is a variety of its own, and not to be equated with either erroneous usage or Nigerian English.

In this class students will first get acquainted with the structures and contexts of use of Nigerian Pidgin. Foci for further discussion and students’ research projects will include the use of the variety in the context of the online news service BBC News Pidgin as well as study resources for upper secondary school and how they could be enriched to enable students to better appreciate the language variation they encounter in illustrative original texts for the topic of Nigeria, where Nigerian Pidgin may be used alongside Nigerian English.

Kurs im HIS-LSF