Nigerian Pidgin: Words & Phrases You Should Know

Nigerian Pidgin isn't slang, and it isn't "broken English." It's a fully-formed English-based creole — a real language with its own grammar, spoken as a first language by an estimated 4.7 million people and used as a second language by well over 100 million more, making it the most widely spoken language in Nigeria and one of the most spoken on the entire African continent.

It works as Nigeria's genuine common ground — a language that doesn't belong to any single ethnic group, which is exactly why it became the connective tissue between the country's hundreds of languages and its more than 200 million people. As the British Council puts it, it's "the one language that binds us all."

The definitive academic reference is linguist Nicholas Faraclas's Nigerian Pidgin (Routledge, Descriptive Grammars series) — the first comprehensive grammar of the language, covering its syntax, morphology and phonology in full. For living, current usage, Naijalingo — a Nigerian Pidgin dictionary built by its own speakers — is the closest thing Pidgin has to what ThugBible does for English slang.

Tap any word below for its full breakdown.