West African Pidgin English - History

History

West African Pidgin English arose during the period when the British dominated the Atlantic slave trade in the late 17th and 18th centuries, ultimately exporting more slaves to the Americas than all the other European nations combined. During this period, English-speaking sailors and slave traders were in constant contact with African villagers and long-distance traders along thousands of miles of West African coastline. Africans who picked up elements of pidgin English for purposes of trade with Europeans along the coast probably took the language up the river systems along the trade routes into the interior where other Africans who may never have seen a white man adopted it as a useful device for trade along the rivers.

The existence of this influential language during the slave trade era is attested by the many descriptions of it recorded by early European travelers and slave traders. They called it the "Coast English" or the "Coast Jargon."

A British slave trader in Sierra Leone, named John Matthews, mentioned pidgin English in a letter he later published in a book titled A Voyage to the River Sierra-Leone on the Coast of Africa. Matthews refers to West African Pidgin English as a "jargon," and he warns Europeans coming to Africa that they will fail to understand the Africans unless they recognize that there are significant differences between English and the coastal pidgin:

“Those who visit Africa in a cursory manner...are very liable to be mistaken in the meaning of the natives from want of knowledge in their language, or in the jargon of such of them as reside upon the sea-coast and speak a little English; the European affixing the same ideas to the words spoken by the African, as if they were pronounced by one of his own nation. is a specimen of the conversation which generally passes...:

Well, my friend, you got trade today; you got plenty of slaves?

No, we no got trade yet; by and by trade come. You can’t go.

What you go for catch people, you go for make war?

Yes, my brother… gone for catch people; or they gone for make war."