Igbo

Where it’s spoken

Igbo is the mother tongue of the Igbo people of southeastern Nigeria, dominant in the states of Imo, Anambra, Abia, Enugu, and Ebonyi. Igbo diaspora communities — significantly displaced after the 1967–1970 Biafran War — live in the UK, the United States, Canada, Germany, and elsewhere.

What it sounds like

Igbo is a tonal language with high, low, and downstep tones. It features vowel harmony — words tend to use either advanced or retracted vowels, but not both. The phonology includes labio-velar consonants (kp, gb) and implosive sounds that may be unfamiliar to Indo-European speakers.

How it’s written

Modern Igbo uses the Latin alphabet with subdotted letters (ị, ọ, ụ) to distinguish vowel quality, plus digraphs ch, gb, gh, gw, kp, kw, nw, ny, and sh. Tones are not regularly marked in everyday writing, though they are essential for disambiguation. Earlier orthographies competed before the 1961 Onwu reform.

History

Igbo literacy began in the late 19th century with missionary translations. Igbo Wikipedia and modern Nollywood cinema have expanded the language’s contemporary written and spoken usage.