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Nigerian Pidgin Among New Languages Reaching BBC World Service Listeners05:56
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Updated March 19, 2018

British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) presenter Princess Igho Williams gets ready to broadcast in Pidgin in Lagos, on Aug. 18, 2017. In August 2017, the British media giant launched an online portal entirely in Pidgin, with text news, features and podcasts. Pidgin takes inspiration from Portuguese, the first European language to reach Nigeria's shores, English, the enduring colonial-era language, as well as Jamaican patois imported by former slaves returning to the continent. The language has shifted and evolved uninterrupted since its inception. (Pius Utomi Ekpei/AFP/Getty Images)

This article is more than 2 years old.

The BBC World Service is undergoing its largest expansion since 1941, adding news in 10 new languages in Africa and Asia. Among them Amharic, Tigrinya, Oromo and West African Pidgin.

Here & Now's Robin Young checks in with Adejuwon Soyinka (@adejuwonsoyinka), editor of BBC Pidgin, about the language, its history and the new service's instant popularity.

This article was originally published on March 13, 2018.

This segment aired on March 19, 2018.

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