Nigerian Pidgin is an English-based pidgin and
creole language spoken as a lingua franca across
Nigeria. The language is commonly referred to as
"Pidgin" or "Brokin".

It is distinguished from other
creole languages since most speakers are not true
native speakers, although many children do learn it
at an early age. It can be spoken as a pidgin, a
creole, or a decreolised acrolect by different
speakers, who may switch between these forms
depending on the social setting.

Nigerian Pidgin, along with the various pidgin and
creole languages of West Africa share similarities to
the various dialects of English found in the
Caribbean. Some of the returning descendants of
slaves taken to the New World of West African origin
brought back many words and phrases to West
Africa from the Jamaican Creole (also known as
Jamaican Patois or simply Patois) and the other
creole languages of the West Indies which are
components of Nigerian Pidgin. The pronunciation
and accents often differ a great deal, mainly due to
the extremely heterogeneous mix of African
languages present in the West Indies, but if written
on paper or spoken slowly, the creole languages of
West Africa are for the most part mutually
intelligible with the creole languages of the
Caribbean.

The presence of repetitious phrases in
Jamaican Creole such as "su-su" (gossip) and "pyaa-
pyaa" (sickly) mirror the presence of such phrases
in West African languages such as "bam-bam",
which means "complete" in the Yoruba language.

Repetitious phrases are also present in Nigerian
Pidgin, such as, "koro-koro", meaning "clear vision",
"yama-yama", meaning "disgusting", and "doti-doti",
meaning "garbage".

Furthermore, the use of the words of West African origin in Jamaican Patois,
such as "boasie" (meaning proud, a word that
comes from the Yoruba word "bosi" also meaning
"proud" and "Unu" - Jamaican Patois or "Wuna" -
West African Pidgin (meaning "you people", a word
that comes from the Igbo word "una" also meaning
"you people" display some of the interesting
similarities between the English pidgins and creoles
of West Africa and the English pidgins and creoles of
the West Indies, as does the presence of words and
phrases that are identical in the languages on both
sides of the Atlantic, such as "Me a go tell dem" (I'm
going to tell them) and "make we" (let us). Use of the
word "deh" or "dey" is found in both Jamaican
Patois and Nigerian Pidgin English, and is used in
place of the English word "is" or "are".

The phrase "We dey foh London" would be understood by both
a speaker of Patois and a speaker of Nigerian Pidgin
to mean "We are in London". Other similarities,
such as "pikin" (Nigerian Pidgin for "child" and
"pikney" (or "pikiny", Jamaican Patois for "child",
akin to the standard-English pejorative/epithet
pickaninny) and "chook" (Nigerian Pidgin for "poke"
or "stab" which corresponds with the Jamaican
Patois word "jook", further demonstrate the
linguistic relationship.

Source : Wikipedia

#Anderson_Obiagu

interesting. Though I'm sure the similarities are much less than the differences.

interesting discovery