Homophones are a common source of spelling errors. They are words that are pronounced the same or in a similar manner, but have different spellings or meanings. In this article, we’ll examine common Nigerian Pidgin homophones and show how they differ from each other. way vs wey vs wer come… Read more

In English language, participles serve two purposes: In Nigerian Pidgin, participles only act as adjectives. They are not used to form tenses. When forming tenses in Nigerian Pidgin, we only use the bare infinitive/base form of verbs. Participles as adjectives Here are some example sentences using participles as adjectives: Participial… Read more

There are several things that make spoken Nigerian Pidgin difficult for the untrained ear to comprehend. There’s the speed at which it’s spoken. There’s the variation in pronunciation (accents). There’s the variation in style and choice of words (register). There’s a lot of code switching involved. There’s also elision, which… Read more

English is Nigerian Pidgin’s superstrate language. The vast majority of vocabulary in Nigerian Pidgin originates from English. However, there are a number of English-origin words that cannot be used in Nigerian Pidgin because it would be grammatically incorrect to use them. In essence, these words don’t exist in Nigerian Pidgin.… Read more

Our mission at Naija Guru is to facilitate the transformation of Nigerian Pidgin from a vernacular to a full-fledged and robust literary language. To achieve this mission, we need a standard way to write the language. While there have been several attempts at developing an orthography for Nigerian Pidgin, none… Read more

Voice is a grammatical term that describes the relationship between the action/state expressed by a verb, and the subject and object in a sentence. When the subject performs the action, the verb is in the active voice. When the subject is the target of or undergoes the action, the verb… Read more

Modal verbs are verbs used before a main verb to express ability, possibility, permission, necessity etc. They are modifiers that alter the meaning of the main verb. In this article, we’ll itemize the modal verbs in Nigerian Pidgin and explain how they’re used. Nigerian Pidgin modal verbs Modal verb functions… Read more

Grammatical mood refers to the inflection of a verb in order to express an intent. The intent could be to make a request, give a command, offer a suggestion, state a fact, or express something imaginary or hypothetical. This article explains verb moods with respect to the Nigerian Pidgin language. Read more

Negation is used to express denial, refusal, absence, or contradiction of a statement, action, or idea that would otherwise be considered true or affirmed. Like most languages, Nigerian Pidgin has a set of markers used to indicate negation and rules for how these markers should be used to convey meaning.… Read more

Plurals are forms of words used to indicate that there is more than one thing. In Nigerian Pidgin, all English language pluralization rules apply, but there are a couple other ways to denote plurals. Read more

Tenses are forms of verbs that tell us when, and for how long an action took place. In this article, we will show you how to express the 12 English language tenses in Nigerian Pidgin, as well as how to conjugate verbs in these tenses. Read more

As with most languages, the verb “to be” is one of the most frequently used and versatile verbs in Nigerian Pidgin. This article describes the various forms and functions of the verb “to be” while providing usage examples to help you understand them better. Read more

Reduplication is a word formation process where all or part of a word or phrase is repeated to create a new word or expression. In Nigerian Pidgin, reduplication is a common feature of everyday speech and serves various functions. This article explores the different types of reduplication found in Nigerian… Read more

Nigerian Pidgin draws most of its vocabulary from English (its superstrate language), while its grammatical structures and sentence constructions are strongly influenced by Nigeria’s indigenous languages and by the sociocultural context of Nigerian society. Word order plays a crucial role in languages, as altering the arrangement of words in a… Read more