ABSTRACT
West Africa comprises fourteen countries, Senegal, Gambia, Guinea-Bissau, Guinea, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Ivory Coast, Ghana, Togo, Benin, Nigeria, Cameroon, Equatorial Guinea and Gabon, and has a population approaching 140 million. English is an official language in Gambia, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Ghana, Nigeria and Cameroon and is the most widely-taught second language of the other eight countries. In spite of the multilingualism of the area (with over 1,000 indigenous languages) and five different colonial legacies (British, French, German, Portuguese and Spanish), there is a homogeneity about all the varieties used. This is because the mother tongues of West Africa have many phonological and syntactic similarities, and because there is a chain of mutually-intelligible coastal pidgins and creoles from Gambia to Gabon which influences the English of the region.
