Pichinglis - Size of Speaker Community

Size of Speaker Community

Pichi descends from Krio, which first arrived in Bioko, the former Fernando Po, with African settlers from Freetown, Sierra Leone in 1827 (Fyfe 1962: 165). No official figures exist, but there is good reason to assume that Pichi is today the second most widely spoken African language of the country behind Fang, closely followed by Bubi. It is safe to assume that at least 100,000 people of the country’s population of around one million (2007 UN estimate) use Pichi regularly as a primary or secondary language.

Next to Fang, Pichi and Bubi, over ten other African languages are spoken by the peoples of Equatorial Guinea (Gordon 2005, cf. “Equatorial Guinea”).

One of these is another Creole, the Portuguese-lexicon Creole Fá d'Ambô, spoken by the people of the island of Annobón (cf. Map 1). Fa d’Ambô shares historical and linguistic ties with the other Portuguese-lexicon Creoles of the Gulf of Guinea (cf. e.g. Post 1994), namely Lungwa Santome and Angolar in São Tomé Island and Lun'gwiye in Principe Island (but also cf. Granda 1985 on the influence of Pichi on Fa d’Ambô).

The other languages traditionally spoken in Equatorial Guinea belong to the Bantu branch of the Niger–Congo family. In the literature, Pichi is known under the names Fernando Po Creole English (e.g. Gordon 2005), Fernando Po Krio (e.g. Berry 1970, Holm 1989), Fernandino Creole English (e.g. Holm 1989), Pidgin (English) Morgades 2004), Broken English (e.g. de Zarco 1938) and Pichinglis (e.g. Lipski 1992). While many older speakers refer to the language as Krio or Pidgin, most present-day speakers refer to it as Pichinglis, Pichin with a nasalised final vowel or Pichi tout court.