The BBC in Pidgin? People Like It Well-Well

The BBC in Pidgin? People Like It Well-Well
The offbeat anecdote tickled readers, not only for the story itself but even more so for its rendition in West African Pidgin English, an informal language
that dates from the slave trade and that mixes English with West African languages.
“We’re reaching new audiences in a language that is popular,” said Bilkisu Labaran, who oversees the service in West African Pidgin
and who grew up speaking it, in spite of her parents’ disapproval.
In addition to West African Pidgin English, the service now delivers news in Afaan Oromo, Amharic, Tigrinya (languages spoken in Ethiopia, Eritrea
and other parts of Africa); and in Gujarati, Marathi, Punjabi and Telugu (spoken in India), among others.
In Mr. Ewokor’s dictionary, “adrenaline,” for example, is translated to “power
dey pump for im brain.” Drunken driving is translated as “drunkaman driving.”
Since the Pidgin service started in August, Bill Gates tried his hand at speaking the language in a BBC interview,
where he responded to questions from Nigerians, many of whom speak a variant called Naija, or Nigerian Pidgin.
The headline on the article, published on the BBC’s website, reads like this: “Woman wan troway poo-poo, come trap for window.”
The piece, written in a form of West African Pidgin English, tells the story of a Tinder date gone horribly wrong: A woman in Britain found herself in a deeply embarrassing bind when the toilet in her date’s apartment would not flush
and she tried to throw the “evidence” (“di poo-poo”) out the window.