Overview of the Igbo Language

Unique Features of the Igbo Language

Igbo Tones

It is important to know that Igbo is a toned language. In English, we understand that when we change a vowel in a word (but not the consonant), the meaning changes. Examples would be “bit, bet, and bat.” Change the vowel, change the meaning. The same applies with our consonants: “run, rum, rug." Change the consonant, change the meaning.

All of these rules apply in Igbo, but one more is very foreign to us. Do not change the vowel; keep it the same. Do not change the consonant; keep it the same. But change the TONE of the unchanged vowel, and the meaning will change! Igbo has a high tone and a low tone. (It also rarely has a mid-tone, but it only follows a high tone.)

Our typewriter keyboards do not allow us to add tone markings. As a result, it is impossible to type in pure Igbo. This means in hundreds of printed publications in Igbo, no tone is indicated whatsoever, lost or abandoned. In Nigeria, there was something referred to as “Market Publications”. These were locally printed and published local histories, books of names, and even Igbo dictionaries. All without tone markings! A native speaker can often recognize the printed word without tones and usually supply them (but not always). A native English speaker reading these words can only guess which syllables are “high” and “low.” Following the rules and habits of English accents, we often get them wrong, producing gibberish or even embarrassment.

To help the reader understand more about how tones work, I will type high tones in CAPITAL letters and low tones in lowercase letters. Here, I will share a tone-teaching device I used back in my Peace Corps Training days (more than 55 years ago). My favorite example for illustrating tones is the Igbo word “akwa.”

A-kwa has the tones HIGH-low. “Accent” on the first syllable. It has the meaning “cloth.”

A-KWA has the tones HIGH-HIGH. (Keep your voice high for the second syllable.) It means "to cry."

a-KWA has the tones low-HIGH (almost like you are asking a question). It means “egg.”

a-kwa has the tones low-low. (We are not used to saying words with no accent, which is similar to a tone, so this is always a challenge.) It means “bed.”

The consonants did not change. The vowels did not change. Only the tones changed, and that changed the meaning! Welcome to a tone language.

As confounding as all of this must be to us as native speakers of English, believe me, any Igbo child aged two or three has already mastered hearing the differences, understanding the meaning shift, and generating the tones effectively.

Without going into greater detail, let me indicate what happens when a series of short words are joined together. They each had unique tones in isolation, but thrust together, the tones can/do alter. I have been able to reconstruct the table that demonstrates these shifting rules, and they can become maddening to get right. It is comparable in complexity to learning a European language (German especially) where there are endings for masculine, feminine, and neuter, and they change according to what tense, plurality, or case they are used.

As an aside, English has dropped many, many of these (not all), which is why it is so much easier for a European to learn English than for an English speaker to learn a European (or other) language. There are very few cases and agreement endings to master. I suggest that it is one of the reasons that English has spread so rapidly that it has become a type of global lingua franca.

Igbo Syllables

Igbo has only two types of syllables. A vowel by itself, such as “a-,“ and a consonant followed by a vowel, such as “ba.” It does not have a syllable form with the consonant at the end, as in “in,” “at,” or “up,” so common in English. In other words, simple words like “run, big, cat” present a challenge, and they often add another vowel to the second consonant just to be able to utter it: “run-u, big-a, top-uh, cat-eh.” A few words have been borrowed from neighboring languages, where the consonant is final, but they are few.

Consonant Clusters Challenges

Igbo has very few consonant clusters, compared to English, which has dozens. During one of those rainy season days in my house with the bam-bam metal roof, where it rained day and night for three weeks straight, I actually searched and wrote down dozens and dozens of them, probably more than 100. As English teachers, sooner or later we would have to teach our students to hear them and generate them (no easy task).

For example, my last name is Starkweather. The “St” is a common English consonant cluster, but usually outside the ability of the native Igbo speaker. They habitually split the two consonants and insert a vowel between turning it into familiar consonant-vowel syllable patterns. In my name, the next sound is the vowel “ah” which they have, but they do not have a closing “r” in their language, so it all gets modified to “ah”. The next sound is a “k,” which they have and a “w,” which they have. In fact, Igbo does have a small consonant cluster, “kw,” which they could use. But often, they split the two with a vowel, usually with an “ee.” The vowel in “weather” they have as “eh”, but there are no 'th's” in Igbo (or in most other languages for that matter). They substitute a “d”. The final “er” (no final “r's”) gets changed to “ah”.

The outcome is a charming “See-tah-kee-weh-dah”, or at best “See-tah-kweh-dah”. Needless to say, we had a lot to teach in the way of pronunciation alone.

Igbo Vowels

Igbo has eight vowels. American English has 11 vowels (the Brits claim we have a few more) and three diphthongs. Diphthongs are vowels that start as one sound and morph into another. Examples are eye, bite, mind (ai); cow, plow, now (au); and oil, toy, royal (oi). So, we get to teach some new sounds that Igbos have never made before in order to speak English (without a heavy, telling accent).

Several of the Igbo vowels are so close to English vowels that we can understand them clearly, and they work well for us. These interchangeable vowels are “i=ee,” “e=eh,” “a=ah,” “u=ooh,” “o=oh,” and “aw=aw.”

Igbos do not have the so-called “short i”. as in sit, him, gym, and even though they have a vowel close by, they usually substitute the “ee” sound: “sit=seet”, “him=heem”, and “gym=jeem”. This creates a bit of an accent as a result. Other examples are lacking the vowel in “wait, tray,” substituting “eh” or sometimes “aah.” My first name is Frank, pronounced “Feh-raahnk”. They also lack the vowel in 'butt' substituting 'ooh,' or the vowel in “put, foot, look,” also substituting “ooh.”

Igbos have a vowel generated in a tongue position between the typed “i=ee” and the vowel “e=eh”. This separate vowel is typed as “i” with a dot under it! With no such underlying dot to type with, in print, this vowel almost disappears, shelved incorrectly as “i=ee”. Another Igbo vowel not found in English is produced in the back of the throat a bit lower than “u=oo.” It is indicated as a “u with a dot under it.” Not being able to type the dot, this vowel also almost disappears, mislabeled as a conventional “u”. Yet another vowel has a dot under it. It is the “aw” sound, indicated with the letter “o” with a dot. The convention of typing it as “aw” has not caught on (except in the town named Awka), but a hangover from the colonial era has. The early Igbo attempt at writing down the British pronunciation of “Doctor” uses written “or” for this “aw” sound since the British way of uttering that final “-or” is so similar to “aw.” There is a prominent village spelled Orlu. It is an example of a final “r” presented in writing that they do not pronounce but instinctively shift to”aw”= Awlu.

Vowel Harmony

Just another wonderful and unusual feature of Igbo is vowel harmony. Imagine a table being made to number the vowels from one to four, counting down vowels made with the tongue in the front of the mouth. That would be 1. “ee,” 2. the in-between vowel almost like our short “i,” 3. “eh,” and 4. “ah.” Then continuing, starting at the back and top of the mouth, the vowel 5. “oo,” 6. the in-between vowel above “oh,” 7. “oh,” and 8, “aw.” Eight vowels, four with odd numbers, and four with even numbers.

Now, here comes the unique part. Typical Igbo words will have vowels only from the odd group or only from the even group, NOT MIXED! An example is the Igbo word for strong: “ike=EE-keh.” In the other group, we have the word “AH-so (with a dot under the typed “o” or “AH-saw,” meaning saliva). We do not have these separation rules in English, but they are strong in Igbo. In fact, some linguists have detected that many Igbo speakers will carry over this vowel harmony pattern when speaking English! We don't notice it, but it does contribute to the Igbo English accent (unless the speaker has been able to take advantage of a lot of advanced pronunciation training, which most have not.)

One more fascinating detail: Igbo has two vowels (common with many West African languages) which are “m” and “n”!! When given a greeting, a Peace Corps Volunteer learned to respond “Aw-di-MM-ma”. (It is good). The MM is a vowel (voiced, of course), and it carries a tone. In a similar way, we find “nna=NN-na” to mean father, and “nne=NN-neh” to mean mother. We also see it in the Igbo town named Nnewi, and many other places.

Igbo Consonants

So far, we have touched on tones and vowels. To complete this exercise, we will conclude with consonants. Realize that languages have consonants where the voice box remains silent, called voiceless. They also have consonants that are made in the same spot in the mouth but with the voice box engaged, called voiced.

Here is a list of paired consonants formed in the mouth in the same spot, the first being voiceless, the second the voiced mate: p/b, t/d, f/v, k/g, s/z, sh/zh, ch/j. There are other types of consonants as well such as l, m, n, r, w, and y. There is also h, which is voiceless, but Igbo has a voiced version indicated by “gh.” In Igbo, the word “agbogho” appears. ”Gh” is an important consonant because it often suggests negation when used at the end of a word. “Gh” is an example of two letters used together to indicate a single sound, called a digraph in linguistics.

We have digraphs in English as well, especially with the “th,” which can be either voiceless, as in “think, thin, Thursday,” or voice, as in “this, that, father.” We would never dream of splitting the “t” from the “h” because we clearly understand that the “th” is a digraph, a pair of letters standing for one sound.

Igbo (as well as several other African languages) has a digraph pair that is forever confounding English speakers. We know that ”p” and “b” are a pair of voiceless and voiced consonants made with the lips. In English and Igbo, these sounds are exhaled, and the air is sent out of the mouth as they are pronounced. But Igbo has a variant where the air is not expelled but rather reversed, sucked in. This is hard for us to execute without a lot of coaching. First, we must learn to hear it, which we usually don't. Then we have to learn how to produce it, and it's hard to learn.

These Igbo variants are given the digraphs of “kp” and “gb.” Some linguists insist that there is a simultaneous closure of the airwaves not only at the lips (the p and b portion) but also back in the throat at the location where k/g are made. This may be true, but it is way beyond us as English speakers to learn if it is true. To me, the exhale/inhale aspect is more important.

Most English speakers are confounded when seeing the “kp” and “gb” when printed. This shows up most commonly with sports announcers automatically (and erroneously) splitting the digraph into two separate consonants (Big mistake!) Take, for instance, the name of the outstanding wideout on the Ohio State Football Team, named Emeka Egbuka. Some pronounce it 'Eg-boo-ka”. Better they just treat the “G' in “GB” as silent and go forward with the English “B,” in this case, “Eh-boo-ka.” A similar issue arises with a football player whose last name is Igbinosun. The sports announcers render this as “ig-be-no-sun” mistakenly splitting the “gb.”

This is a historical mistake by English speakers. The name of the people and their language is “Igbo”. So many see it and split the digraph and give us “ig-bo= ig-bow”. Another common version is to render it as “EE-bow”. In fact, that gives the name an accent/high tone on the first syllable (following the usual English pronunciation rules), but the word Igbo in the Igbo language has only low tones, no high tones! English speakers have difficulty pronouncing such a word without an accent (high tone) on the first syllable. So now this huge Nigerian language group has a new name for themselves, given by English speakers:” EE-bow.”

Igbo Consonant Clusters

English has dozens of consonant clusters, and most of them create pronunciation problems for Igbos. We'll avoid getting side-tracked into a long discussion of English consonant clusters but will mention the few consonant clusters found in Igbo.

“Kw” and “Gw” are two prominent ones. Although not common in English, they do appear in words such as “quiet”, and the name “Gwen”. The word for child is “nwa,” where the “n' is not a vowel. Still, it is pronounced together with the “w.” This is also the case for “ny” in the word “nyocha” meaning “close scrutiny or examination.” The nearest we have it in English is in the word “canyon” if we place the hyphen after the vowel to render “ka-nyun.”

Igbo Calendar

We have seven days in our week. Not the Igbos; they have four days called ubochi. In order, they are named “eke, orie, afor (pronounced afaw) and nkwo. This makes up the week called izu. So, they have seven weeks izu in a month onwa. There are 13 months in the year with one extra day. Their year begins in the third week of February on an nkwo day.

By the way, the villages in an area have long ago worked out on which day each will hold their market. Village One may have an Eke Market. Village Two nearby would have an Orie Market. The next and third village would have an Afor Market and the Fourth the Nkwo Market. Then the cycle begins again. Over time, some of them developed a specialty. For instance, one may specialize in fresh meat (all of them sell vegetables), for another, they specialize in yams, for another, maybe pottery, and so on. (I found they all had palm wine!) Everyone, by cultural law, is required to attend the market, so they are always busy and lively places.

When calling on a Peace Corps Volunteer at their village school, I would work to improve their language teaching techniques. I also quickly learned what the local market day was so that I could attend that, too. There were always new and wonderful things to be found there, as well as information, especially if I stopped by the palm wine shed just to hear what was going on and for the fellowship. I always found the elderly males welcomed the opportunity to talk with a young white man. For many, it was their first time, because the colonial Brits rarely bothered coming into the villages, let alone hanging out with the folks. The Peace Corps did that. Those conversations often led to where the dibia/shrine priest was to be found and where the carvers lived. Palm wine led to carvings.

Igbo Names

I started this conversation about the Igbo week because, in those days at least, there was still a long tradition of naming children after the day of the week they were born. If it was a male child, the name could become Oko+Eke= Okeke, or Okorie, or Okafor or Okonkwo. If it was a girl child the word “mgbo” would be used rendering Mgbeke, or Mgborie, etc. Also used was “nwa=child” giving Nwankwo, etc.

I found out years ago if I was in a big American city and I wanted to find an Igbo to make friends with; I would go to the phone book (we had them in those days) and open the pages starting with “O”. I would find a few Polish names (Ognoski, Owczarzak, etc) and a lot of Irish names (O'Leary, O'Reilly, etc). But mostly, I would find a ton of Igbo names. There they were: Okeke, Okonwo, etc. It's an easy clue if you ever want to find an Igbo.

By the way, I had one particular Igbo graduate student as one of my Igbo Language staff at a Peace Corps Training Program (1967). His name was Sunday Nwokorie. His parents kept the tradition of naming their child for the day of the week he was born, in this case, the English day of the week, and yet kept the family name of an elder who was born on Orie day.