By Augustine Akhilomen
Nigerian pidgin English appears to have found its way to the global village after it was ranked 14th amongst the 20 most spoken languages in the world.
The origins of Nigerian Pidgin English lie historically in trade contact between the British and local people in the seventeenth century.
It is part of a continuum of English Pidgins and Creoles spoken other West-African countries such as Cameroon, Sierra Leone and Ghana.
In recent years, Nigerian Pidgin English development has been particularly evident in the big cities and ports in the south of Nigeria, where it is used among people belonging to different ethnic groups; the use of Nigerian Pidgin English is strictly linked to the urbanization process.
However, the recent ranking OF Nigerian pidgin English simply indicate that the language has been appreciated by other countries in the world as means of communication.
Nigerian Pidgin with 121 million speakers came in 14th, with Nigeria seeing its population skyrocketing and expected to be the fourth largest country in the world by population by 2050 behind the US.
English is the most spoken language in the world with more than 1.4 billion native and non-native speakers, becoming like Greek and Latin in times gone by as the default language in business, tourism and more.
French, which is also commonly taught to English pupils, comes in fifth with 280 million speakers worldwide behind Mandarin in second (1.1 billion speakers), Hindi (602 million speakers) and Spanish with about 550 million speakers.
Other languages which are more commonly used than German include Modern Standard Arabic (274 million speakers), Bengali (272 million speakers), Russian (258 million speakers), Portuguese (257 million speakers), Urdu (231 million speakers) and Indonesian (199 million speakers).
Despite tailing behind all of those languages with about 135 million speakers, German is still the fifth most taught language in the world and unlike many of its European counterparts it is spoken almost exclusively on the continent.
Only Austria, Liechtenstein, Switzerland, and Luxembourg have sizeable German-speaking populations, with Belgium having a tiny amount of Belgian speakers around the city of Eupen.
Closely behind German, with 125 million speakers is Japanese, despite the fact the language is only officially spoken in Japan.
It is thought the large number of Japanese speakers is brought on by the fact so many learn the language to enjoy the country’s cultural exports and do business in the world’s third-largest economy.
Credit: https://www.express.co.uk/
