How do you say, "how are you?"
Do you say, "what's up?" Well, however which way you say it, there's a language here in Nigeria called Pidgin English, and it's a language that's a mix of everything. This is how you'd say "how are you" in Pidgin English: "How you dey?" Pretty simple, right? Dey is like "is" and your current state and stuff, it's kinda a hard word to explain, but that's pretty much what it means. The rest is pretty much easy to decipher. Now how would you respond? You could do this in many ways, but one way is to say: "Body dey inside shirt." This is a way of saying, "hey, at least I'm still moving!" Pidgin English is almost like the middle language, one that you can speak in even if you only speak English and another person only speaks Yoruba, because the language has a mixture of a whole bunch of languages. For all you Lord of the Rings fans, it's the Common Tongue for Nigeria. In the Pirates of the Caribbean you'll even hear Jack Sparrow speak some Pidgin, crazy huh? Let me teach you a few words in Pidgin English. "Abi" means "right?" And if you are asking a question, you usually start it off with the word "Se," which is pronounced "Sheh." So "Se you get" means what? "You get it man?" is the English equivalent of "Se you get?" Seriously, this thing is complex, but I don't think that there's an official dictionary of it even though it's been around for hundreds of years. I don't speak it fluently, not even close, but I can understand a lot more than I can speak because it has many English words in it, so I can get the overall message of what someone's saying. Awesome, right? Maybe I'll make a list of words in Pidgin English with their English equals, and I'll post it here, so that all of us can learn something!
Signing off,
The Traveler
Do you say, "what's up?" Well, however which way you say it, there's a language here in Nigeria called Pidgin English, and it's a language that's a mix of everything. This is how you'd say "how are you" in Pidgin English: "How you dey?" Pretty simple, right? Dey is like "is" and your current state and stuff, it's kinda a hard word to explain, but that's pretty much what it means. The rest is pretty much easy to decipher. Now how would you respond? You could do this in many ways, but one way is to say: "Body dey inside shirt." This is a way of saying, "hey, at least I'm still moving!" Pidgin English is almost like the middle language, one that you can speak in even if you only speak English and another person only speaks Yoruba, because the language has a mixture of a whole bunch of languages. For all you Lord of the Rings fans, it's the Common Tongue for Nigeria. In the Pirates of the Caribbean you'll even hear Jack Sparrow speak some Pidgin, crazy huh? Let me teach you a few words in Pidgin English. "Abi" means "right?" And if you are asking a question, you usually start it off with the word "Se," which is pronounced "Sheh." So "Se you get" means what? "You get it man?" is the English equivalent of "Se you get?" Seriously, this thing is complex, but I don't think that there's an official dictionary of it even though it's been around for hundreds of years. I don't speak it fluently, not even close, but I can understand a lot more than I can speak because it has many English words in it, so I can get the overall message of what someone's saying. Awesome, right? Maybe I'll make a list of words in Pidgin English with their English equals, and I'll post it here, so that all of us can learn something!
Signing off,
The Traveler
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