Others call it 'Guinea Coast Creole English' to emphasize its role as a creole native language spoken in and around the coastal slave castles and slave trading centers by people permanently based there. Some scholars call this language 'West African Pidgin English' to emphasize its role as a lingua franca pidgin used for trading. At that point, it became a creole language. Later in the language's history, this useful trading language was adopted as a native language by new communities of Africans and mixed-race people living in coastal slave trading bases such as James Island, Bunce Island, Elmina Castle, Cape Coast Castle and Anomabu. The language quickly spread up the river systems into the West African interior because of its value as a trade language among Africans of different tribes. Later, as British merchants arrived to engage in the slave trade, they developed this language in combination with local African slave traders in order to facilitate their commercial exchanges. Portuguese merchants were the first Europeans to trade in West Africa beginning in the 15th century, and West African Pidgin English contains numerous words of Portuguese origin such as 'sabi' (to know), a derivation of the Portuguese 'saber'. West African Pidgin English arose during the period of the transatlantic slave trade as a language of commerce between British and African slave traders. These include Sierra Leone Krio, Nigerian Pidgin, Ghanaian Pidgin English, Cameroonian Pidgin English, Liberian Pidgin English, the Aku dialect of Krio, and Pichinglis. īecause it is primarily a spoken language, there is no standardized written form, and many local varieties exist.

As of 2017, about 75 million people in Nigeria, Cameroon, Ghana and Equatorial Guinea used the language. It originated as a language of commerce between British and African slave traders during the period of the transatlantic slave trade. West African Pidgin English, also known as Guinea Coast Creole English, is a West African pidgin language lexified by English and local African languages.