User Profiles

As an on going attempt to make NL more social, we have just released user profiles. This is done with the intention of giving people the ability to discover more words and information about their favorite lexibutor. These profiles are currently not editable by NL members, but will soon be. In order to steer away from the generic social network style profile and stay true to the intentions of NL to be a pidgin English dictionary and not a social network, we do not plan or making fields such as birthday, address and such on a lexibutors page. We are working on designing the profiles in a way that best enhances the learning and discovering of new pidgin English words. This first roll out is the first step and gradually, features will be added to both the viewers and NL member sides of the site to give both parties more power in using the information on the site. Hope you enjoy it!

Naija Lingo on Startup Nigeria

Sometime ago Adim Ofunne, one of the co-founders of Naija Lingo was asked to do an interview for startupsnigeria.com when it was dicovered he was also the co founder of the no longer existing Nigerian Social network igbadun.com. The interview was published on moday the 1st of september.

This will be the third time Naija Lingo is featuring on startupsnigeria.com and we have been overwhelmed and grateful for all the publicity. For those of you that have been living under a rock. Startups Nigeria is a blog that is dedicated to informing you about all the up and coming companies in Nigeria, from websites to telecomunication companies. You should definately check it out if you have not already.

Funny pidgin video

We received a link to a page from someone called lexy, where we found this video. We thought it was really funny and wanted to share.

Request a Definition

The NL team has just cooked up a new feature in our kitchen. This feature allows both members and non members of NL to request a word to be defined and added to the NL dictionary.

NL is all about educating the public about Nigerian culture and even though we have a huge dictionary of pidgin english words there are new words formed everyday or one or two we or our trusted lexibutors might have missed and you need a definition to ASAP. So it is only natural we have a section on the site where you can request a word to be defined and added to the dictionary.

If your not a member of NL you will need to fill in both your email address and the word you want to be defined so we can alert you when the word has been defined. If your already a member all you need to do is sign in and add a word and we will alert you when it is defined. It is just that simple.

Spread the word.

New Forum!

As we promised, this month we would deliver on new features and tools that will give lexibutors more power on the site as well as create more of a community on NL to bring all of us together to share thoughts, ideas and perspectives.

On that note we are launching the NL Forum today! The NL team was talking one day about pidgin English and various aspects about it, what we loved, what could be changed and where the trend might lead and something struck us. What if we could have this kind of enlightening  discussion with everyone that wants to contribute to this interactive dictionary? That’s how the forum was born. Secretly we have been cooking up the forum in the background while you have been adding words.

This forum is not only for discussing Nigerian words. Any topic can be discussed here because we feel the discussion of Nigerian related topics will jug your memory of Naija Lingo hence make it easier to ad more words. We have four major categories: General, where you can talk about anything from Obama to Paris Hilton’s new video. Naija Talk, which is about things happening in Nigeria or Nigerian related information. Nigerian Pidgin English Words, this is where you can discuss the words on the site or even words outside the site, get people’s opinions on what they mean. This can be a good place to ask about a word that is not on the site but you need a definition to quickly. Last but not least Using Naija Lingo, this is where you can talk about the site, what you love about it and what you may not love so much about it. What you will like to see in future and all that cool stuff.

The forum is open to everyone but you have to be a member of the site to add a discussion, if your not, fill out our short registration form

This is exciting for us and we hope you love it as much as we do. Enjoy!

Naijalingo hits a 100 lexibutors!

So I woke up this morning went straight to the bathroom to brush my teeth and shower because I have a busy day ahead of me. One thing common with everyone that runs a site (at least the  ones that enjoy doing it) is that when you sleep your dreaming about how to make the site better, when you eat you think about the same thing and when your in the shower that’s all you can think about. So I was wondering this morning when Naijalingo was gonna hit the 100 lexibutor mark, when we could say there are at least a 100 people interested in aggregating Nigerian pidgin English and I thought about what I will do the day this happens (Like taking of my NL shirt and running around my neighborhood waving it like a flag) keep in mind that I knew there were 98 members last night so this was not gonna be far off.

I came back and sat down at my computer, checked a couple of my routine sites and then went to check out what’s new on NL (I save the best for last). Lo and behold NL had a 100 members, I was numb for a second it was as if God was teasing me, I couldn’t even take of my shirt and run around and scream or even dance makossa. I just looked at my screen and stared. What I then decided to do was to write this post and to thank all of you that have all helped to raise the awareness on NL.

Thank You!

Naijalingo Tees

As we promised, NL is going to be coming out with a bunch of new features/products that will help us in both repping Nigeria and making naijalingo easy to use as a community and today we have launched Naijalingo Tees.

This started when members of NL team wanted to wear tshirts that represented their country and culture but could not find any that fit their taste for a decent price. We realized that we are probably not the only ones that have ever encountered this proble

m so we decided to design shirts that we want to wear and make them available for people like us who will like to strut in patriotic fashion from time to time.

This is not a buisness model but a service so  we plan to roll out new shirts from time to time as inspiration comes or ideas are suggested. So If there is a particular kind of shirt you want to see, drop us a line in the contact box and we will see what we can do for you. So stop reading this blog and go and organise some naija baffs.

Take a deep breathe…

It is a brand new monday of a brand week of a brand new month. What is important about this month is that that this is when NL is gonna unleash a lot of the things we have had in the works behind the scenes. There is not gonna be any major interface graphical changes but we have a whole array of products and features that by the end of the month you might not know NL as it is today.

We plan to both empower lexibutors, increase the reach of NL and make more tools that increases the relevance and usefulness of NL to everyone. We have started this with a little step by making a facebook page where you can join and show support for NL which will help spread the word through your news feeds and also lets all your friends know you are one of the movers and shakers creating and forging a standard for an undocumented but powerful and extensive language.

Show your support and add a new word today and join our facebook fan club if you are a member of facebook. Take a deep breathe and take a screenshot of Naija Lingo today because you may not believe we were once at the level we are today when you look back.

Naija Love

Some might have noticed a little link love between NL and sturvs.com this past week. We wrote a little post praising their service and they showed us love back by linking back to NL and also increasing our stay on the front page of sturvs.com. We are blushing from all the attention we have gotten so far.

The NL Team is happy that there are other Nigerian Internet companies out there that share our philosophy of sharing love. NL and sturvs.com are in the same business and that is aggregating Nigerian culture, we do this by aggregating Nigerian pidgin English and slangs while they do so by bringing you both news and entertainment that is relevant to Nigerians and this is very important in the world we live in where the western culture is influencing and sometimes eliminating many cultural practices (Although this is not entirely bad).

So the NL team is calling out to all Nigerian Websites out there to support each other and we have started this not only by adding sturvs.com to our NL Team favorite sites but have also added the “sturv it” widget to our site (on the left). We will continue to incorporate tools from sturvs.com and other Nigerian sites according to their relevance to NL and its features to come.

Naija Lingo on Sturvs.com

As we come to the end of May, looking back this has been a good month for NL. We launched this blog as well as other features and we got some recognition from the media.

Currently, as of writing this post Naija Lingo is on the front page of sturvs.com (This is one of the NL teams favorite Naija Sites). Due to he high traffic on sturvs we have gained more than 10 lexibutors within a day and more eyeballs (viewers) than we care to count. We are really happy that NL is is beign noticed and the NL community is growing because we have a lot to share so stay tuned you will not be disappointed.