Erei is a generic name for the language and people. It belongs to the Niger-Congo
phylum of languages, and it is spoken predominantly by the Erei people in Biase
Local Government Area of Cross River State, Nigeria. The paper examines English
loanwords, particularly English nouns, as lexical enrichment to Erei. The study
adopts Einar Haugen’s (1950) Analysis of Linguistic Borrowing Model as the
appropriate theoretical framework. This model is considered because it considers
borrowings which are analyzable into word classes as a universal characteristic of
languages. Data for the study were obtained using participant (speech) observation,
direct interaction with Erei native speakers in their naturally occurring speech
events, and other secondary sources. The findings reveal that Erei borrows
massively from English lexicons, especially of the noun class (proper, countable,
uncountable and collective nouns) which are influenced by the Christian religion,
sociolinguistic and cultural, technological and phonological factors believed to
facilitate the adoption, adaptation, modification and integration of the loans into the
Erei vocabulary. There is the need, therefore, for the gradual development and
review of Erei corpus to accommodate new developments.