Nigerian Pidgin New Locale Data Contribution to Unicode

One important step for any language is recognition by the Unicode® Consortium.
In 2019, Rodakych received approval for Nigerian Pidgin as a New Locale from The Unicode® Consortium. We entered the Nigerian Pidgin New Locale data in the Unicode® Common Language Data Repository (CLDR) Survey Tool.

Data entered into the survey tool can be used by a wide spectrum of companies for their computer, cell phone and other devices software work. This data can be adapted for different languages down to their local areas. This means that companies can use the Nigerian Pidgin New Locale data which we put into CLDR to do their work.

The Unicode Consortium is a non-profit corporation devoted to developing, maintaining, and promoting software standards and data for different languages of the world. Its purpose is to help people around the world to use computers, cell phones, and other devices in any language. In other words, the organization provides a single, consistent way to represent each letter and symbol needed for all human languages across all computer devices. The details and information are available for free.

The data we entered into CLDR was released to the public. We received high commendation for the submission. Unicode CLDR states on their website, “Special thanks to the contributors to Nigerian Pidgin; one of the very few locales to go from zero to Modern coverage in one submission cycle!”

A CLDR Technical Committee Representative said,

Date 2020-01-14 1:45 pm

Daphne, Roy,

“Perhaps I speak on behalf of Unicode and CLDR but wanted to personally thank you. Your input to address every Survey Tool dashboard item in Basic (and beyond) is wonderful. You have shown yourselves a model of great participation! Thank you!

In the meantime, all your hard work will serve Nigerian Pidgin and its language community well and I look forward to refining how well this will work on computers and mobile devices.

Thanks again.”

Rodakych is a Liaison member of The Unicode Consortium. Liaison membership is offered by invitation only to standards and research organizations that have interests in common with the consortium. Liaison representatives have primary responsibility for the interchange of information between the two parties which allows us to contribute to the ongoing development of the Unicode Standard.