Igbo language is one of the many languages spoken in Nigeria. Since its independence, the main languages in Nigeria have been Hausa, Igbo and Yoruba, also known by the word ‘wazobia’, i.e. ‘wa’ in Yoruba, ‘zo’ in Hausa, and ‘bia’ in Igbo, all meaning ‘to come’. Igbo is predominantly spoken in Abia, Imo, Enugu, Anambra, Ebonyi and parts of Rivers and Delta states. Speaking English, you can get by in most parts of Igboland, though in some very remote areas, only Igbo is understood.
Igbo language is classified as a Niger-Congo language and belongs to the Kwa sub-group of languages spoken in sub-Saharan Africa. It is estimated that some of these Kwa languages have been spoken in roughly the same locations as today for over 4,000 years. Main characteristics for the Kwa languages are the tones and vowel harmony.
Tones (also called contrastive pitch) are used to differentiate words that are written identically. For example, the same word in Igbo may have four different meanings depending on its pitch. In tone languages, pitch is a property of words, but what is important is not absolute pitch but relative pitch. Igbo language makes use of two main tones: the high tone (such as u as in “rule”) is pronounced with the tongue bent towards the roof of the mouth. The low tone (such as a in “father”) is produced with the tongue flat and low in the mouth and with the mouth a bit wider than for high tones. Considering the high and low tones, akwa can mean either weeping (high-high tone), cloth (high-low), egg (low-high) or bridge (low-low).
Syllables with both combinations of vowels rarely occur in one word, unless it is a compound word or compound verb. Also, some of the suffixes do not harmonise with the verb stem.
Note that for the first person singular, the m follows the verb stem.
aha m bü Michael; aha m abüghï Nick my name is Michael; my name is not Nick.
Note that the noun does not change if it is in plural.
Infinitives have a vowel prefix, i or ï, harmonising with the vowel of the verb stem.
The participle is used with an auxiliary to specify its action. The auxiliary precedes the participle and is connected with it through a hyphen if immediately followed by the participle.
ö nö ya? is he in?
ö nö ebe ahu? is he there?
In Igbo language, verbs do not distinguish between present and past tense. The meaning of the verb is generally changed by the suffix that specifies the action in the present or past. Some of these suffixes harmonise with the verb stem, others do not, and sometimes multiple suffixes can follow each other in a combination.
ï bïara? did you come?
Olee ka i mere? How are you doing?
To go in more details would go beyond the scope of this book, and I would suggest to read the grammar books mentioned in the references.
Prepositions are words used before a noun or pronoun to specify a place, position or time. In Igbo, there is only one preposition na. When preceding a vowel, it has the tone of that vowel and is written n’ instead.
Interrogatives are used to ask a question. In Igbo, a question can only be initiated by either an interrogative or a personal pronoun.
The pronoun could be followed by ka or ihe in case the interrogative is not the sole subject of the sentence.
olee maka ndi be gï? how about your family?
olee ihe ha kwuru? What did they say?
olee ka i mere? how do you do?
gïnï ka unu na-eme? what are you (pl.) doing?
ebee ka ï nö? where are you?
ego ole ka ö bü? how much money is it?
onye ka ï bü? who are you?
onye mere ihea? who does this?
onye ka ihea mere? who does this happen to?
adï m mma? am I good?
The official Igbo orthography refers to a characterset with dots below the characters instead of umlauts above them. However, this characterset is not yet internationalized and accessible through webbrowsers. Once this characterset will be available for webbrowsers, this website will be updated. For now, a PDF file using the correct character notation is downloadable here (right-click and "Save as" if you want to download the file).
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