Nigerian Pidgin

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Nigerian Pidgin or NPE, also known simply as Pidgin, Broken or as Naijá in scholarship, is an English-based creole language spoken as a lingua franca or vehicular language across Nigeria coming into existence during the 17th and 18th centuries as a result of contact between colonizing Britons and African slavers involved in the Atlantic slave trade. Sometimes referred to as Pijin or Vernacular, it has over time become the speech form with the widest geographical coverage and largest amount of speakers in Nigeria besides English. It is the largest of the various varieties/registers of West African/Guinea coast creoles and can be spoken as a dialect or a decreolised acrolect by different speakers, who may switch between these forms depending on the social setting. Variations of what this article refers to as "Nigerian Pidgin" are also spoken across West and Central Africa, in countries such as Benin, Ghana, and Cameroon.

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