Igbo language

Igbo is the main native language of the Igbo people, who live in southeastern Nigeria. Around 31 million people speak it. Depending on how one distinguishes a language from a dialect, the broader Igboid family may contain roughly 35 distinct languages. The core Igbo cluster, often considered a single language, has limited mutual intelligibility across its northern, western, southern, and eastern groupings. A standardized literary form called "Igbo izugbe" (meaning "general Igbo") was developed and adopted around 1972, drawing mainly from the Orlu (Isu), Anambra (Awka), and Umuahia (Ohuhu) dialects, while leaving out the nasalization and aspiration found in those varieties.

The first published work to include Igbo terms was *History of the Mission of the Evangelical Brothers in the Caribbean* (1777). Shortly after, in 1789, *The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano* appeared in London, written by a former slave from Essaka; it contained 79 Igbo words and described Igbo life in detail. Following British Niger Expeditions in 1854 and 1857, Samuel Ajayi Crowther published an Igbo primer based on work by a young Igbo missionary, Simon Jonas, who accompanied him to Aboh in 1857. The Union Igbo Bible (1913) standardized the language for church use. Central Igbo, proposed as a literary form in 1939 by Ida C. Ward, drew on dialects from two Ezinifite group members in Central Owerri Province, between Owerri and Umuahia. It gradually gained acceptance among missionaries, writers, and publishers. Standard Igbo aims to blend Central Igbo with words from other dialects and includes loanwords. In a 1999 lecture sponsored by the Roman Catholic Archdiocese in Owerri, Chinua Achebe strongly criticized these standardization efforts, from Union Igbo through Central Igbo to Standard Igbo. Historically, many enslaved people trafficked from the Bight of Biafra during the Atlantic slave trade spoke Igbo.

Igbo and its dialects are dominant in these Nigerian states: Abia, Anambra, Ebonyi, Enugu, Imo, and northern Delta State.

Igbo is a tonal language. Most dialects have three register tones and three contour tones. The tone system was used by John Goldsmith as an example of autosegmental phenomena beyond the linear model in *The Sound Pattern of English*. Words can differ only by tone—for instance, *ákwá* (cry), *àkwà* (bed), *àkwá* (egg), and *àkwà* (cloth). Since tone is not usually written, all appear as ⟨akwa⟩ in print. Often the two or three tones shown in dictionaries don't capture how words are actually spoken, suggesting Igbo may have more tones than previously recognized. For example, the imperative form of *bia* (come) has a different tone than in the statement *O bia* (he came); that same imperative tone appears in the second syllable of *abuo* (two). Another distinct tone occurs in the second syllable of *asaa* (seven), and yet another in the second syllable of *aguu* (hunger).

The language uses 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: /i ɪ e ɛ a o ɔ u/ (the last often transcribed /ʊ/ in neighboring languages). Phonemic transcriptions typically mark only one parameter as distinctive—either RTR (as in Igbo orthography) or vowel space (as in alphabetic charts). Nasal vowels also exist. Adjacent vowels usually assimilate in speech. The sound of a preceding vowel, often at the end of a word, merges quickly into the following vowel, giving the second vowel more prominence. The first vowel becomes only slightly identifiable, usually centralizing. For example, */kà ó mésjá/* becomes */kòó mésjá/* (goodbye). An exception occurs with words ending in /a/, such as */nà/* in */nà àlà/* (on the ground), which may completely assimilate, leaving just /n/ in rapid speech, as in "nàlà" or "n'àlà". In other dialects, */a/* in */ọ́ nà èrí ńrí/* (he/she/it is eating) results in a long vowel: */ọ́ nèèrí ńrí/*.

Because Igbo is tonal, the meaning of a word changes with the tone used. There are two main tones: high (marked with an acute accent) and low (marked with a grave accent). For instance, the word ⟨akwa⟩ can mean "cry," "egg," "cloth," or "sew" depending on tone. High on the first and last syllables gives "cry"; low on the first and high on the last gives "egg"; low on both gives "cloth" or "sew." Another example is ⟨eze⟩: with a high tone on the first syllable and a low tone on the second, it means "king"; with a middle tone on the second, it means "teeth."