Language

English is the official language in Nigeria. Nigeria was colonized by the British, obtaining independence on October 1, 1960. Many other African countries were colonized by the French, so a lot of them have French as the official language, so if I plan to travel further around the continent, being able to understand and speak French will be a big plus. Being able to write it would be even nicer!

Also, there is also a variation of English called 'Pidgin English' or 'Broken English'. For instance, "I'm going" is "I de go", "I wont" is "I no", "what" is "wetin", and those are just a few examples.

There are three main languages, named after the peoples they belong to. They are Yoruba, Ibo (also spelled Igbo), and Hausa. There are however, over 300 dialects, both within the main languages, and across them.

The region in which I work has two local languages in addition to English, Efik and Ibibio. Many elder people never learned English and so only know the local languages. To learn it would be a big help as I need to always have an interpreter for now.

Efik is one of the Niger-Congo languages, this is a language of Cross river state in Nigeria. Efik is used in education up to the university level. Efik has four tones. An initial nasal, m or n, functions as a vowel and can take a tone.

Ibibio language is very similar to Efik except the tones are used differently and the accent is slightly different.