Igbo

## Overview

**Igbo** is the principal native language of the Igbo people, an ethnic group of southeastern Nigeria. The language has approximately 24 million speakers, who live mostly in Nigeria and are primarily of Igbo descent. Igbo is written in the Latin script, which was introduced by British colonialists. Igbo has over 20 dialects, though dialect levelling appears to be occurring. A standard literary language was developed in 1972 based on the Owerri (Isuama) and Umuahia (such as Ohuhu) dialects, though it omits the nasalization and aspiration of those varieties. Related Igboid languages such as Ika, Ikwerre and Ogba are sometimes considered dialects of Igbo; the most divergent of these is Ekpeye. Igbo is also a recognised minority language of Equatorial Guinea.

## History

The first book to publish Igbo words was *History of the Mission of the Evangelical Brothers in the Caribbean* (German: *Geschichte der Mission der Evangelischen Brüder auf den Carabischen Inseln*), published in 1777. Shortly afterwards in 1789, *The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano* was published in London, England, written by Olaudah Equiano, a former slave, featuring 79 Igbo words. The narrative also illustrated various aspects of Igbo life in detail, based on Olaudah Equiano's experiences in his hometown of Essaka. The language was standardized in church usage by the Union Ibo Bible (1916), shortly after completion Thomas John Dennis died in a shipping accident off the Welsh coast, but the Bible manuscript he was working on was reportedly washed ashore and found by a fisherman.

Central Igbo, the dialect form gaining widest acceptance, is based on the dialects of two members of the Ezinihitte 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 Dr. Ida C. Ward, it was gradually accepted by missionaries, writers, and publishers across the region. In 1972, the Society for Promoting Igbo Language and Culture (SPILC), a nationalist organisation which saw Central Igbo as an imperialist exercise, set up a Standardisation Committee to extend Central Igbo to be a more inclusive language. Standard Igbo aims to cross-pollinate Central Igbo with words from Igbo dialects from outside the "Central" areas, and with the adoption of loan words.

## Present state

There are some discussions as to whether the Igbo language is in danger of extinction, advanced in part by a 2006 UNESCO report that predicted the Igbo language will become extinct within 50 years. Professor of African and African Diaspora Literatures at University of Massachusetts, Chukwuma Azuonye, emphasizes indicators for the endangerment of the Igbo language based on criteria that includes the declining population of monolingual elderly speakers; reduced competence and performance among Igbo speakers, especially children; the deterioration of idioms, proverbs, and other rhetorical elements of the Igbo language that convey the cultural aesthetic; and code-switching, code-mixing, and language shift.

External and internal factors have been proposed as causes of the decline of Igbo language usage. Preference for the English language in post-colonial Nigeria has usurped the Igbo language's role and function in society, as English is perceived by Igbo speakers as the language of status and opportunity. This perception may be a contributor to the negative attitude towards the Igbo language by its speakers across the spectrum of socio-economic classes. Igbo children's reduced competence and performance has been attributed in part to the lack of exposure in the home environment, which impacts intergenerational transmission of the language. English is the official language in Nigeria and is utilized in government administration, educational institutions, and commerce. Aside from its role in numerous facets of daily life in Nigeria, globalization exerts pressure to utilize English as a universal standard language in support of economic and technological advancement. A 2005 study by Igboanusi and Peter demonstrated the preferential attitude towards English over the Igbo language amongst Igbo people in the communication, entertainment, and media domains. English was preferred by Igbo speakers at 56.5% for oral communication, 91.5% for written communication, 55.5–59.5% in entertainment, and 73.5–83.5% for media.

The effect of English on Igbo languages amongst bilingual Igbo speakers can be seen by the incorporation of English loanwords into Igbo and code-switching between the two languages. English loanwords, which are usually nouns, have been found to retain English semantics, but typically follow phonological and morphological structures of Igbo. Lexical items conform to the vowel harmony intrinsic to Igbo phonological structures. For example, loanwords with syllable-final consonants may be assimilated by the addition of a vowel after the consonant, and vowels are inserted in between consonant clusters, which have not been found to occur in Igbo. This can be seen in the word *sukulu*, which is a loanword derived from the English word school that has followed the aforementioned pattern of modification when it was assimilated into the Igbo language. Code-switching, which involves the insertion of longer English syntactic units into Igbo utterances, may consist of phrases or entire sentences, principally nouns and verbs, that may or may not follow Igbo syntactic patterns. Igbo affixes to English verbs determine tense and aspectual markers, such as the Igbo suffix -i affixed to the English word check, expressed as the word CHECK-i.

The standardized Igbo language is composed of fragmented features from numerous Igbo dialects and is not technically a spoken language, but it is used in communicational, educational, and academic contexts. This unification is perceived by Chukwuma Azuonye as undermining the survival of Igbo by erasing diversity between dialects. Each individual dialect possesses unique untranslatable idioms and rhetorical devices that represent Igbo cultural nuances that can be lost as dialects disappear or deteriorate.

## Igbo excerpt from Wikipedia article "Asụ̀sụ̀ Ìgbò"

Asụsụ Igbo bu asụsụ Niger-Congo nke madu rúrú ndè iri abụô na ise nke ndi júrú ya bụ ndi Igbo. Na nleda-owuwa Naijiria na ébé Niger Delta, Igbo bụ díàlà. Ha dèrè yá nà édé Latin, nke ndí mpaghara Britain nwètèrè. Nkárí ndi ọzọ bu nké Èkpè búrú nkárí Nsịbịdị. Asụsụ Igbo bu ólú nke a na akpo n'ezigbo hanwa. Ọ di ike taa ndi óbiá i-suta ya, dikwa ike taa ndi Igbo ọzọ bi na ámá nkẹ ọzọ Í mátá ihe ndi nke ozo na ekwu, maka na ndi Igbo na olu Igbo hiri nne.