« Le nouchi c’est notre créole en quelque sorte, qui est parlé par presque toute la Côte d’Ivoire »

This statement of Nash, an artist of Côte d’Ivoire RAP, on an internet channel of Côte d’Ivoire television in 2009 formulates and summarizes a wish shared by number of natives of Côte d’Ivoire. For the authors of this contribution, it is only an illustration of the symbolic character of the nouchi, in Côte d’Ivoire and beyond. The nouchi, known in its early stages as an Ivorian slang mixed with French, jula and other European and Ivorian languages, is ranked in hybrid languages today, or crossover languages (Queffelec 2007). We intend at first to reconstruct the nouchi within the sociolinguistic and geolinguistic framework, before setting up some general concern in relation to the categorization of such hybridized languages.