As we all know a "pidgin" of a language is a "kind of dialect" spoken by people in a country (often a colony) that has a mother language different from the one of the rulers and that uses "mixed" loanwords from this rulers' language while creating a new language. Practically all the neolatin languages -to give an example- were initially pidgins of latin and successively developed in modern French, Spanish, Portuguese, etc...
The Somalia president Siad Barre talking to the italian engineer Luciano Travaglia in the 1970s. Barre was able to speak perfectly in Italian language (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UiAIswl9AvQ) and also in "Pidgin italian of Somalia"
Banti is probably the only existing analysis of Italian as spoken in Somalia based upon a corpus of actual sentences. Banti's corpus was written in 1990 and was very small and drawn from two speakers only, namely, two Somali women employed as house workers by Italian expatriates in the eighties. A simplified and unstable form of Italian -according to Banfi- very probably continued to be in use among uneducated Somali when entering in contact with the Italian community. It is also possible that its use was actually boosted in the seventies and eighties: formal education in Italian was no longer available, while the number of educated Somali of the older generations (often speaking “good” Italian) and of Italian residents (many of them with a certain command of Somali) was slowly decreasing.
At the same time, there was a burgeoning number of Italian expatriates working in technical cooperation and education, many of them spending relatively short periods of time in the country.......Certainly the points in common between this "simplified Italian of Somalia" and the "Restructured Italian Pidgin of Eritrea" are striking: is there a common origin? This seems to be the answer adumbrated by Banti, who hints at a "common tradition” rather than to "parallel developments”, without further elaboration. One can hypothesize that the Eritrean troops deployed to Somalia by the Italian authorities during the colonial times may have acted as middlemen in the acquisition of a modicum of Italian on the part of Somalis, especially in Mogadishu.
Actually there are many loanwords from the italian language in the somalian language: for example all the months of the year are from the italian. But the greatest influence of the italian language is in the use of the latin alphabet: the somalian language is written with the vocals and consonants of the latin language.
As I wrote last month in my "Italian language in Italy's colonies", The pidgin spoken in Italian Somalia was important in the capital Mogadiscio and in some minor cities (like in the Merca/Villabruzzi). For further information about "Mogadiscio italiana" read https://dadfeatured.blogspot.com/2018/05/italian-mogadishu.html.
The italian language was undertood by nearly all the native inhabitants of Mogadishu in 1941, while half of them was able to speak in Italian using the Somali Pidgin Italian.
The following are possible percentages of the 1940 use of pidgin by the native population (together with their own language) in the italian colonies of Africa. The percentages have a five percent increase or reduction value, according to historian E. Aiello:
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Colony............percentage of natives speaking Pidgin.............................only in the capital area
Eritrea................................64%................................................................95% (Asmara)
Libya..................................51%................................................................91% (Tripoli)
Somalia..............................42%................................................................84% (Mogadiscio)
Ethiopia..............................10%...............................................................26% (Addis Abeba)
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As can be read above, in 1940 Mogadicio the 84% of the native somalian population spoke the Somalian Pidgin Italian (together with their Somalian language), while in all Somalia the 42% was able to use this pidgin.
However we must remember that the Aiello's percentages are not confirmed by precise & detailed research and can be wrong (but -in my opinion- they give an aproximate idea, more or less real & correct).
The pidgin italian of Somalia is similar to the pidgin italian of Eritrea, because many eritrean colonial troops were in Italian Somalia in the 1930s and these soldiers interacted with the civilian native population of Somalia speaking with "italianised" words that could be understood by everybody.....and so these words and sentences were accepted by the Somalians in their pidgin.
Indeed in the Italian pidgin of Somalia it is common the use of Italian participles as past or perfective markers. It seems reasonable to assume that these similarities have been transmitted through Italian "foreigner talk" stereotypes.
Two examples of full similarity between the Italian Pidgin of Eritrea and the one of Somalia:
1) luy andato lospεdale; in Italian: È andato all’ospedale (in English: he has gone to the hospital)
2) o bεrduto soldi ki tu dato bεr me; in Italian: ho perso i soldi che mi hai dato (in English: I have lost the money you gave me)
Given the prolonged Italian presence in Somalia, that lasted nearly one century and that began with Italian colonisation, continued with the Italian Trust Administration first and then with university collaborations at the time of the independence regime, the Italian lexicon - especially in the technical-scientific field - is present in the somalia language with many recent loanwords, often created at the desk during the compilation of technical-scientific manuals, as part of the “Somalisation” campaigns of the specialized lexicon. And this lexicon -of course- was present also in the pidgin of Somalia.
Finally, even if this pidgin has disappeared (but a few very old Somalians -in their eighties or nineties- still remember it in the 2020s), according to the linguist Mauro Tosco "an italian, and therefore romance, layer will certainly remain in the Somalian language". For further information, please read Tosco's "A case of weak romancisation in East Africa": https://www.academia.edu/3152863/A_case_of_weak_Romancisation_Italian_in_East_Africa?email_work_card=reading-history.
