FEATURES OF NIGERIAN ENGLISH

THE IGBO EXAMPLE

Abstract

Nigeria is among the fifty-four member nations of the
Commonwealth, where the English language is spoken as official language. This implies that Nigeria is among the lands 'conquered' by the language during the colonial era. In the world's global village English is spoken either as mother tongue (L1), second language or foreign language. The diverse forms the English language is spoken across the world and cultures
have given rise to varieties of English. When we come to Nigeria with a whopping population of over one hundred and sixty million people distributed in some four hundred and fifty ethnic groups, we agree that similar varieties of English exist. To this end, it is expedient that language scholars of Nigerian
extraction painstakingly document the varieties of English available in the country. In this essay we attempt to explore the Igbo example of Nigerian English at the levels of syntax, morphology, phonology, semantics and literature of what
constitutes Nigerian English, since the over four hundred and fifty ethnic groups in Nigeria represent the diverse varieties of Nigerian English. However, this study does not say the final word on the Igbo example of Nigerian English as no research work is ever complete. Therefore, we call on language scholars to conduct further research findings on aspects of Nigerian English, since language is dynamic. The methodology as well as the theoretical framework is library or literary research and data collected from the scripts of our students over the years of our teaching English as a second language.