West African Pidgin English
Encyclopedia
West African Pidgin English, also called Guinea Coast Creole English, was the lingua franca
, or language of commerce, spoken along the West African coast during the period of the Atlantic slave trade
. British slave merchants and local African traders developed this language in the coastal areas in order to facilitate their commercial exchanges, but it quickly spread up the river systems into the West African interior because of its value as a trade language among Africans of different tribes. Later in its history, this useful trading language was adopted as a native language by new communities of Africans and mixed-race people living in coastal slave trading bases like James Island
, Bunce Island
, Elmina Castle
, Cape Coast Castle
, and Anomabu
. At that point, it became a creole language
.
Some scholars call this language "West African Pidgin English" to emphasize its role as a lingua franca pidgin
used for trading. Others call it "Guinea Coast Creole English" to emphasize its role as a creole
native language spoken in and around the coastal slave castles and slave trading centers by people permanently based there.
The existence of this influential language during the slave trade era is attested by the many descriptions of it recorded by early European travelers and slave traders. They called it the "Coast English" or the "Coast Jargon."
A British slave trader in Sierra Leone, named John Matthews, mentioned pidgin English in a letter he later published in a book titled A Voyage to the River Sierra-Leone on the Coast of Africa. Matthews refers to West African Pidgin English as a "jargon," and he warns Europeans coming to Africa that they will fail to understand the Africans unless they recognize that there are significant differences between English and the coastal pidgin:
and creole
languages, West African Pidgin English took the majority of its vocabulary from its target language (English), and much of its sound system, grammar, and syntax
from the local substrate languages (West African Niger–Congo languages).
The English dialect that served as the target language (or lexifier) for West African Pidgin English was not the speech of Britain's educated classes, though, but the Nautical English spoken by the British sailors who manned the slave ships that sailed to Africa. Nautical speech contained words from British regional dialects as well as specialized ship vocabulary. Evidence of this early nautical speech can still be found in the modern pidgin and creole languages derived from West African Pidgin English. In Sierra Leone Krio
, for instance, words derived from English regional dialects include padi ("friend"), krabit ("stingy"), and berin ("funeral"). Words from specialized ship vocabulary include kohtlas ("machete"), flog ("beat," "punish"), eys [from "hoist"] ("to lift"), and dek ("floor").
in The Gambia, Sierra Leone Krio
, Nigerian Pidgin English, Ghanaian Pidgin, Cameroonian Pidgin English
, Fernando Poo Creole English
, etc. -- are all derived from this early West African Pidgin English. Indeed, these contemporary English-based pidgin and creole languages are so similar that they are sometimes grouped together under the name "West African Pidgin English," though the term applies more properly to the trade language spoken on the West African coast two hundred years ago.
Some scholars also argue that African slaves took West African Pidgin English to the New World where it helped give rise to the English-based creoles that developed there, including the Gullah language
in coastal South Carolina and Georgia, Bahamian Dialect, Jamaican Creole
, Belizean Kriol
, Guyanese Creole, Sranan Tongo
in Surinam, etc. Since the slaves taken to the Americas spoke many different African languages, they would have found West African Pidgin English as useful as a lingua franca on the plantations as they had found it back home in West Africa as a trading language. Their enslaved children born in the Americas would have adopted different versions of West African Pidgin English as their native languages, thus creating a series of New World English-based creoles.
The similarities among the many English-based pidgin and creole languages spoken today on both sides of the Atlantic are due, at least in part, to their common derivation from the early West African Pidgin English. Note the following examples:
Dem dey go for go it res -- They are going there to eat rice
Dem dey go chop rais -- They are going there to eat rice
Dey di go for go chop rice -- They are going there to eat rice
Dem duh gwine fuh eat rice -- They are going there to eat rice
who live in the mountainous interior of Jamaica
have preserved a ritual language
which, according to linguists, resembles the West African Pidgin English that was spoken along the coast of West Africa certuries ago during the era of the Atlantic Slave Trade. The Maroons' ancestors were runaway slaves who created free settlements in the interior of Jamaica and managed to hold on to their freedom for generations. Today, the Maroons speak Jamaican Creole
in their daily lives, but they have also retained a ritual language that they call "Deep Patois" which is used during their "Kromanti Play," a ceremony in which the participants are said to be possessed by their ancestors and to speak as their ancestors did centuries ago. Linguists call the Deep Patois "Maroon Spirit Language"
(MSL), and they point to many conservative phonological and grammatical features in MSL that are not found in modern Jamaican Creole. Some of these features are still present, though, in related creole languages, such as Sierra Leone Krio
spoken in West Africa and Sranan Tongo
spoken in Suriname
in South America. MSL has a number of English-derived words, like waka ("walk"), dede ("dead"), and aksi ("ask"), in which an extra vowel is added at the end. During the 18th century, Africans often added an extra vowel to the end of English words when they took them into West African Pidgin English. Since words in African languages usually end in vowels, this gave the English words a familiar form and made them easier to pronounce.
Lingua franca
A lingua franca is a language systematically used to make communication possible between people not sharing a mother tongue, in particular when it is a third language, distinct from both mother tongues.-Characteristics:"Lingua franca" is a functionally defined term, independent of the linguistic...
, or language of commerce, spoken along the West African coast during the period of the Atlantic slave trade
Atlantic slave trade
The Atlantic slave trade, also known as the trans-atlantic slave trade, refers to the trade in slaves that took place across the Atlantic ocean from the sixteenth through to the nineteenth centuries...
. British slave merchants and local African traders developed this language in the coastal areas in order to facilitate their commercial exchanges, but it quickly spread up the river systems into the West African interior because of its value as a trade language among Africans of different tribes. Later in its history, this useful trading language was adopted as a native language by new communities of Africans and mixed-race people living in coastal slave trading bases like James Island
James Island (The Gambia)
James Island is an island in the Gambia River, 30 km from the river mouth and near Juffureh in the country of The Gambia. On 6 February 2011 it was renamed Kunta Kinteh Island to give the Island a Gambian name. Fort James is located on the island...
, Bunce Island
Bunce Island
Bunce Island is the site of an 18th century British slave castle in the Republic of Sierra Leone in West Africa....
, Elmina Castle
Elmina Castle
Elmina Castle was erected by Portugal in 1482 as São Jorge da Mina Castle, also known simply as Mina or Feitoria da Mina) in present-day Elmina, Ghana . It was the first trading post built on the Gulf of Guinea, so is the oldest European building in existence below the Sahara...
, Cape Coast Castle
Cape Coast Castle
Cape Coast Castle is a fortification in Ghana built by Swedish traders. The first timber construction on the site was erected in 1653 for the Swedish Africa Company and named Carolusborg after King Charles X of Sweden. It was later rebuilt in stone....
, and Anomabu
Anomabu
Anomabu , is a town on the coast of Ghana, Africa.-European colonization:Anomabu became the focus of intense European trade rivalry in the 17th and 18th centuries, partly because of its easy access to a rich hinterland and partly because the local Anomabu were themselves powerful and astute traders...
. At that point, it became a creole language
Creole language
A creole language, or simply a creole, is a stable natural language developed from the mixing of parent languages; creoles differ from pidgins in that they have been nativized by children as their primary language, making them have features of natural languages that are normally missing from...
.
Some scholars call this language "West African Pidgin English" to emphasize its role as a lingua franca pidgin
Pidgin
A pidgin , or pidgin language, is a simplified language that develops as a means of communication between two or more groups that do not have a language in common. It is most commonly employed in situations such as trade, or where both groups speak languages different from the language of the...
used for trading. Others call it "Guinea Coast Creole English" to emphasize its role as a creole
Creole language
A creole language, or simply a creole, is a stable natural language developed from the mixing of parent languages; creoles differ from pidgins in that they have been nativized by children as their primary language, making them have features of natural languages that are normally missing from...
native language spoken in and around the coastal slave castles and slave trading centers by people permanently based there.
History
West African Pidgin English arose during the period when the British dominated the Atlantic slave trade in the late 17th and 18th centuries, ultimately exporting more slaves to the Americas than all the other European nations combined. During this period, English-speaking sailors and slave traders were in constant contact with African villagers and long-distance traders along thousands of miles of West African coastline. Africans who picked up elements of pidgin English for purposes of trade with Europeans along the coast probably took the language up the river systems along the trade routes into the interior where other Africans who may never have seen a white man adopted it as a useful device for trade along the rivers.The existence of this influential language during the slave trade era is attested by the many descriptions of it recorded by early European travelers and slave traders. They called it the "Coast English" or the "Coast Jargon."
A British slave trader in Sierra Leone, named John Matthews, mentioned pidgin English in a letter he later published in a book titled A Voyage to the River Sierra-Leone on the Coast of Africa. Matthews refers to West African Pidgin English as a "jargon," and he warns Europeans coming to Africa that they will fail to understand the Africans unless they recognize that there are significant differences between English and the coastal pidgin:
- “Those who visit Africa in a cursory manner...are very liable to be mistaken in the meaning of the natives from want of knowledge in their language, or in the jargon of such of them as reside upon the sea-coast and speak a little English; the European affixing the same ideas to the words spoken by the African, as if they were pronounced by one of his own nation. [This] is a specimen of the conversation which generally passes...:
- Well, my friend, you got trade today; you got plenty of slaves?
- No, we no got trade yet; by and by trade come. You can’t go.
- What you go for catch people, you go for make war?
- Yes, my brother… gone for catch people; or they gone for make war."
Structure
Like other pidginPidgin
A pidgin , or pidgin language, is a simplified language that develops as a means of communication between two or more groups that do not have a language in common. It is most commonly employed in situations such as trade, or where both groups speak languages different from the language of the...
and creole
Creole language
A creole language, or simply a creole, is a stable natural language developed from the mixing of parent languages; creoles differ from pidgins in that they have been nativized by children as their primary language, making them have features of natural languages that are normally missing from...
languages, West African Pidgin English took the majority of its vocabulary from its target language (English), and much of its sound system, grammar, and syntax
Syntax
In linguistics, syntax is the study of the principles and rules for constructing phrases and sentences in natural languages....
from the local substrate languages (West African Niger–Congo languages).
The English dialect that served as the target language (or lexifier) for West African Pidgin English was not the speech of Britain's educated classes, though, but the Nautical English spoken by the British sailors who manned the slave ships that sailed to Africa. Nautical speech contained words from British regional dialects as well as specialized ship vocabulary. Evidence of this early nautical speech can still be found in the modern pidgin and creole languages derived from West African Pidgin English. In Sierra Leone Krio
Krio language
Sierra Leone Krio is the lingua franca and the de facto national language spoken throughout the West African nation of Sierra Leone. Krio is spoken by 97% of Sierra Leone's population and unites the different ethnic groups in the country, especially in their trade and social interaction with each...
, for instance, words derived from English regional dialects include padi ("friend"), krabit ("stingy"), and berin ("funeral"). Words from specialized ship vocabulary include kohtlas ("machete"), flog ("beat," "punish"), eys [from "hoist"] ("to lift"), and dek ("floor").
Historical impact
The various pidgin and creole languages still spoken in West Africa today—the Aku languageAku language
Aku is a variety of Sierra Leone Krio, an English-based Creole language of Western Africa. Aku is spoken primarily in Gambia, mainly by the Aku people, who are descendants of the Sierra Leone Creole people. In many ways the Akus are an extension of the Sierra Leone Creole community....
in The Gambia, Sierra Leone Krio
Krio language
Sierra Leone Krio is the lingua franca and the de facto national language spoken throughout the West African nation of Sierra Leone. Krio is spoken by 97% of Sierra Leone's population and unites the different ethnic groups in the country, especially in their trade and social interaction with each...
, Nigerian Pidgin English, Ghanaian Pidgin, Cameroonian Pidgin English
Cameroonian Pidgin English
Cameroonian Pidgin English, or Cameroonian Creole, is a language variety of Cameroon. It is also known as Kamtok . Five varieties are currently recognised:...
, Fernando Poo Creole English
Fernando Poo Creole English
Fernando Po Creole is one of the names under which the English-lexicon Creole of Bioko Island is known...
, etc. -- are all derived from this early West African Pidgin English. Indeed, these contemporary English-based pidgin and creole languages are so similar that they are sometimes grouped together under the name "West African Pidgin English," though the term applies more properly to the trade language spoken on the West African coast two hundred years ago.
Some scholars also argue that African slaves took West African Pidgin English to the New World where it helped give rise to the English-based creoles that developed there, including the Gullah language
Gullah language
Gullah is a creole language spoken by the Gullah people , an African American population living on the Sea Islands and the coastal region of the U.S...
in coastal South Carolina and Georgia, Bahamian Dialect, Jamaican Creole
Jamaican Creole
Jamaican Patois, known locally as Patois or Jamaican, and called Jamaican Creole by linguists, is an English-lexified creole language with West African influences spoken primarily in Jamaica and the Jamaican diaspora. It is not to be confused with Jamaican English nor with the Rastafarian use of...
, Belizean Kriol
Belizean Kriol language
Belizean Creole English, known as Kriol by its speakers, is an English-based creole language most closely related to Miskito Coastal Creole, Limón Coastal Creole, Colón Creole, San Andrés and Providencia Creole, Guyanese Creole, Jamaican Patois and English creoles of the Caribbean show similarity...
, Guyanese Creole, Sranan Tongo
Sranan Tongo
Sranan is a creole language spoken as a lingua franca by approximately 300,000 people in Suriname...
in Surinam, etc. Since the slaves taken to the Americas spoke many different African languages, they would have found West African Pidgin English as useful as a lingua franca on the plantations as they had found it back home in West Africa as a trading language. Their enslaved children born in the Americas would have adopted different versions of West African Pidgin English as their native languages, thus creating a series of New World English-based creoles.
The similarities among the many English-based pidgin and creole languages spoken today on both sides of the Atlantic are due, at least in part, to their common derivation from the early West African Pidgin English. Note the following examples:
- Sierra Leone Krio:
Dem dey go for go it res -- They are going there to eat rice
- Nigerian Pidgin English:
Dem dey go chop rais -- They are going there to eat rice
- Cameroonian Pidgin English:
Dey di go for go chop rice -- They are going there to eat rice
- Gullah:
Dem duh gwine fuh eat rice -- They are going there to eat rice
Maroon Spirit Language
The Jamaican MaroonsJamaican Maroons
The 'Jamaican Maroons are descended from slaves who escaped from slavery and established free communities in the mountainous interior of Jamaica during the long era of slavery in the island. African slaves imported during the Spanish period may have provided the first runaways, apparently mixing...
who live in the mountainous interior of Jamaica
Jamaica
Jamaica is an island nation of the Greater Antilles, in length, up to in width and 10,990 square kilometres in area. It is situated in the Caribbean Sea, about south of Cuba, and west of Hispaniola, the island harbouring the nation-states Haiti and the Dominican Republic...
have preserved a ritual language
Sacred language
A sacred language, "holy language" , or liturgical language, is a language that is cultivated for religious reasons by people who speak another language in their daily life.-Concept:...
which, according to linguists, resembles the West African Pidgin English that was spoken along the coast of West Africa certuries ago during the era of the Atlantic Slave Trade. The Maroons' ancestors were runaway slaves who created free settlements in the interior of Jamaica and managed to hold on to their freedom for generations. Today, the Maroons speak Jamaican Creole
Jamaican Creole
Jamaican Patois, known locally as Patois or Jamaican, and called Jamaican Creole by linguists, is an English-lexified creole language with West African influences spoken primarily in Jamaica and the Jamaican diaspora. It is not to be confused with Jamaican English nor with the Rastafarian use of...
in their daily lives, but they have also retained a ritual language that they call "Deep Patois" which is used during their "Kromanti Play," a ceremony in which the participants are said to be possessed by their ancestors and to speak as their ancestors did centuries ago. Linguists call the Deep Patois "Maroon Spirit Language"
Jamaican Maroon Spirit Possession Language
Jamaican Maroon spirit-possession language, or simply Maroon Spirit language, is a ritual language used by Jamaican Maroons while possessed by the spirits of ancestors during Kromanti ceremonies or when addressing those who are possessed...
(MSL), and they point to many conservative phonological and grammatical features in MSL that are not found in modern Jamaican Creole. Some of these features are still present, though, in related creole languages, such as Sierra Leone Krio
Krio language
Sierra Leone Krio is the lingua franca and the de facto national language spoken throughout the West African nation of Sierra Leone. Krio is spoken by 97% of Sierra Leone's population and unites the different ethnic groups in the country, especially in their trade and social interaction with each...
spoken in West Africa and Sranan Tongo
Sranan Tongo
Sranan is a creole language spoken as a lingua franca by approximately 300,000 people in Suriname...
spoken in Suriname
Suriname
Suriname , officially the Republic of Suriname , is a country in northern South America. It borders French Guiana to the east, Guyana to the west, Brazil to the south, and on the north by the Atlantic Ocean. Suriname was a former colony of the British and of the Dutch, and was previously known as...
in South America. MSL has a number of English-derived words, like waka ("walk"), dede ("dead"), and aksi ("ask"), in which an extra vowel is added at the end. During the 18th century, Africans often added an extra vowel to the end of English words when they took them into West African Pidgin English. Since words in African languages usually end in vowels, this gave the English words a familiar form and made them easier to pronounce.