Igbo language - WikiHQ

Igbo ( , ; Standard Igbo: Ásụ̀sụ́ Ìgbò ) is the principal native language of the Igbo people, an ethnicity in the Southeastern part of Nigeria.

Igbo languages are spoken by a total of 31 million people. Shortly afterwards in 1789, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano was published in London, England, written by Olaudah Equiano, who was a former slave, featuring 79 Igbo words. Following the British Niger Expeditions of 1854 and 1857, Samuel Ajayi Crowther, published an Igbo primer coded by a young Igbo missionary named Simon Jonas, who travelled with him to Aboh in 1857.

The language was standardized in church usage by the Union Igbo Bible (1913).

Central Igbo is based on the dialects of two members of the Ezinifite group of Igbo in Central Owerri Province between the towns of Owerri and Umuahia in Eastern Nigeria. From its proposal as a literary form in 1939 by Ida C. Ward, it was gradually accepted by missionaries, writers, and publishers across the region.

Standard Igbo aims to cross-pollinate Central Igbo with words from other Igbo dialects, with the adoption of loan words.

Historically, the Igbo language was spoken by a large number of enslaved people trafficked to the Americas from the bight of biafra, during the Atlantic Slave Trade.

Distribution

Igbo (and its dialects) is the dominant language in the following Nigerian states:

Abia State
Anambra State
Ebonyi State
Enugu State
Imo State
Northern Delta State

Phonology

Vowels

thumb|The oral vowel phonemes of Igbo, based on |class=skin-invert-image

Igbo is a tonal language. Tone varies by dialect but in most dialects there seem to be three register tones and three contour tones. The language's tone system was given by John Goldsmith as an example of autosegmental phenomena that go beyond the linear model of phonology laid out in The Sound Pattern of English. Igbo words may differ only in tone. An example is ákwá "cry", àkwà "bed", àkwá "egg", and ákwà "cloth". As tone is not normally written, these all appear as in print.

In many cases, the two (or sometimes three) tones commonly used in Igbo dictionaries fail to represent how words actually sound in the spoken language . This indicates that Igbo may have many more tones than previously recognised. For example, the imperative form of the word bia "come" has a different tone to that used in statement O bia "he came". That imperative tone is also used in the second syllable of abuo "two". Another distinct tone appears in the second syllable of asaa "seven" and another in the second syllable of aguu "hunger".

thumb|A man speaking Igbo

The language features vowel harmony with two sets of oral vowels distinguished by pharyngeal cavity size described in terms of retracted tongue root (RTR). These vowels also occupy different places in vowel space: (the last commonly transcribed , in keeping with neighboring languages). For simplicity, phonemic transcriptions typically choose only one of these parameters to be distinctive, either RTR as in the chart on the right and Igbo orthography (that is, as ), or vowel space as in the alphabetic chart below (that is, as ). There are also nasal vowels.

Adjacent vowels usually undergo assimilation during speech. The sound of a preceding vowel, usually at the end of one word, merges in a rapid transition to the sound of the following vowel, particularly at the start of another word, giving the second vowel greater prominence in speech. Usually the first vowel (in the first word) is only slightly identifiable to listeners, usually undergoing centralisation. /kà ó mésjá/, for example, becomes /kòó mésjá/ "goodbye". An exception to this assimilation may be with words ending in /a/ such as /nà/ in /nà àlà/, "on the ground", which could be completely assimilated leaving /n/ in rapid speech, as in "nàlà" or "n'àlà". In other dialects however, the instance of /a/ such as in "nà" in /ọ́ nà èrí ńrí/, "he/she/it is eating", results in a long vowel, /ọ́ nèèrí ńrí/.

Tone

The Igbo language is tonal in nature. This means that the meaning of a word can be altered depending on the tone used when pronouncing it. Igbo has two main tones: high and low. The high tone is usually marked with an acute accent (´) and the low tone is marked with a grave accent (`).

For example, the word can mean "cry, egg, cloth, sew" depending on the tone used. If pronounced with a high tone on the first and last syllable it means "cry". But if pronounced with a low tone on the first syllable and high on the last syllable, it means "egg". If it is pronounced with low tone on both syllables, then it will mean "cloth" or "sew".

Another example is the word "eze" which means "king" or "teeth". In either case the first syllable is pronounced with a high tone. If the second syllable is pronounced with a low tone, it means "king". But if pronounced with a middle tone, it means "teeth".

The use of tonal inflection in Igbo language is very important because it helps to differentiate between words that would otherwise sound the same. It can be challenging for English speakers to learn how to use the tones properly, but with practice, it can be mastered.

Consonants

Igbo does not have a contrast among voiced occlusives (between voiced stops and nasals): stops precede oral vowels, and nasals precede nasal vowels. Only a limited number of other consonants occur before nasal vowels, including .

{| class="wikitable" style="margin:1em auto; text-align:center"

|+caption | Consonants of Standard Igbo (with nasal vowels)

! colspan=2 rowspan=2 |

! rowspan=2| Labial

! rowspan=2| Dental/ Alveolar

! rowspan=2| Post- alveolar

! rowspan=2| Palatal

! colspan=2| Velar

! rowspan=2| Labial– velar

! rowspan=2| Glottal

!plain

!lab.

!rowspan="2" |Plosive/ Affricate

! voiceless

! voiced

| rowspan="2" | ~

! colspan="2" | Sonorant

| ~

! rowspan=2| Fricative

! voiceless

! voiced

| ~

!colspan=2| Rhotic

In some dialects, such as Enu-Onitsha Igbo, the doubly articulated and are realized as a voiced/devoiced labial–velar implosive. The approximant is realized as an alveolar tap between vowels as in árá. The Enu-Onitsha Igbo dialect is very much similar to Enuani spoken among the Igbo-Anioma people in Delta State.

To illustrate the effect of phonological analysis, the following inventory of a typical Central dialect is taken from Clark (1990). Nasality has been analyzed as a feature of consonants, rather than vowels, avoiding the problem of why so few consonants occur before nasal vowels; has also been analyzed as .

{| class="wikitable" style="margin:1em auto; text-align:center"

|+caption | Consonants of Central Igbo (no nasal vowels)

! colspan="3" rowspan="2" |

! colspan=2| Labial

! rowspan=2| Alveolar

! rowspan=2| Alveolo- palatal

! colspan=2| Velar

! rowspan=2| Labial– velar

! rowspan=2| Glottal

!plain

!pal.

!plain

!lab.

!colspan=3 |Nasal

!rowspan=4 |Plosive/ Affricate

!rowspan=2 | voiceless

! unaspirated

| ;

| rowspan=2|

! aspirated

!rowspan=2 | voiced

! unaspirated

| rowspan=2|

! aspirated

! rowspan=4| Fricative

!rowspan=2 | voiceless

! plain

! nasalized

!rowspan=2 | voiced

! plain

! nasalized

!rowspan=2| Rhotic

!colspan=2| plain

!colspan=2| nasalized

!rowspan=3| Approximant

!colspan=2| voiceless

!colspan=2| voiceless nasalized

!colspan=2| voiced

Syllables are of the form (optional consonant, vowel) or N (a syllabic nasal). CV is the most common syllable type. Every syllable bears a tone. Consonant clusters do not occur. The semivowels and can occur between consonant and vowel in some syllables. The semi-vowel in is analyzed as an underlying vowel "ị", so that -bịa is the phonemic form of bjá 'come'. On the other hand, "w" in is analyzed as an instance of labialization; so the phonemic form of the verb -gwá "tell" is .

Grammar

Igbo is an isolating language that exhibits very little fusion. The language is predominantly suffixing in a hierarchical manner, such that the ordering of suffixes is governed semantically rather than by fixed position classes. The language has very little inflectional morphology but much derivational and extensional morphology. Most derivation takes place with verbal roots. The meaning of , the single preposition, is flexible and must be ascertained from the context. Examples from Emenanjo (2015) illustrate the range of meaning: