It’s not often that a broadcast interview by a diplomat wows listeners,
but a recent conversation involving the United States Ambassador to
Nigeria, James F. Entwistle, is causing a buzz – and winning applause.
The praise is not so much for the content of the interview or the pressing issues the ambassador discussed. It’s more for the language in which he chose to express himself: pidgin English.
Pidgin or broken English is the popular lingua franca in West Africa. The patois cuts across Nigeria, the continent’s most populous nation, which is home to hundreds of local languages, making it easier for millions of Nigerians from different parts of the country to communicate.
