Talk:Igbo language/Archive 1

Igbo / Ibo (2)

Ibo is the predominant US term per Merriam-Webster ; i recognized it immediately on Cleanup, remembering it from press accounts of Biafra, but i was suprised to find in Biafra the link to Igbo, a term i'd never before seen. Igbo may be the professional ethnological term (perhaps the best phoneticization of the local term?), but IMO WP convention calls for Ibo to be the article on the ethnic group, with Igbo a redirect to it; explain in article which contexts the two versions pedominate in. (I doubt having one article for the language and another for the ethnic group can be justified without serious expansion of both.)

(Obviously a revision of the text of the current stub Ibo should be under a heading like ==Mythology == in the combined article, whose main text is currently in Igbo. IMO the separation of Biafra, a recent nation state, from Ibo or Igbo, is proper, but links in both directions are needed.) --Jerzy 12:29, 2004 Feb 15 (UTC)

Use "Igbo" instead:

• Ask any Igbo man whether he prefers "Igbo" or "Ibo" - most prefer "Igbo."
• Search Google for "guestbook mugu". Note that the term "ndi igbo" is preferred by these 419 scammers.
• Search Google for "ibo nigeria" and "igbo nigeria". "igbo nigeria" will turn up TWICE as many results.

Thanks. - Stevey7788

Besides, concerning the term for the language: Ibo was used mostly in the past, but nowadays (since the second half of the twentieth century, in virtually all linguistic literature on Igbo language) Igbo is used, which is indeed phonetically more correct. (Though the /gb/ sound is really somewhere between /b/ and the way English speakers tend to pronounciate /gb/ — technically, it's a labial-velar sound, meaning that you articulate /g/ (velar voiced stop) and /b/ (bilabial voiced stop) simultaneously). There sure should be redirects to guide someone who types 'Ibo'; in fact, there are. I'd keep it this way. — mark ✎ 10:18, 21 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Recent addition

Recently, a notice was added about the number of speakers:

this figure is disputed and could be much higher

I would like to see a source cited before we include this statement (cf. the Cite sources policy). — mark ✎ 08:12, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Yes, t could be much higher. There are many overseas Igbos and Igbos in other countries. -- — Stevey7788 (talk) 20:04, 24 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Igbo wordlist

I'm not an Igbo speaker or teacher, but here is a wordlist I compiled from several offline and online resources. — Stevey7788 (talk) 06:22, 26 Apr 2005 (UTC) -Steve, I'm an Igbo speaker.. some of this is in a different dialect and sit down is spoken in one syllable, not two. 71.175.120.106 (talk) Ijeoma 04:26, 24 June 2008 (UTC)

Basic words

English	Igbo
Yes	é-ye
No	mba
Good	nma
Bad	njo
Come	bia
Go	jé
Sit	noro odu
Stand	guzoro
Mother	nne
Father	nna
Is/are	bu
Your	gi
And	na
Of	nke
We/us	anyị
Money	ego
Fool	iberibe,"ewu"
Son/daughter	nwa
Name	aha
My name is...	aha m bú...
People (ethnic group)	ndi
Man	nwoke
Help me	nyelum aka
Food	nri
Sky/heaven	urukpu/igwe
King/lord	eze
Hand	aka
Hear	anu
Book/paper/school	akwukwo
Land/soil	ala
Water	mmiri
God	Chukwu
Devil	ekwensu
Prayer	ekpere
Pen/pencil	mkpisi

Greetings

English	Igbo
Hello	nda/kee
How are you?	kedu
Good morning	ité-la/ibola chi
Good-bye	no-nu/ka-odi
Thank you	imé-la
Please	biko

Time

English	Igbo
Day	Ubochi
Week	Izu
Month	Onwa
Year	Afo	Yesterday	Unyaahu
Today	Taa
Tomorrow	Echi
Morning	Ututu
Afternoon	Ehihie
Night	Abali

Numbers

English	Igbo
One	otú
Two	abuo
Three	ato
Four	ano
Five	isé
Six	isii
Seven	asaa
Eight	asato
Nine	itolu
Ten	iri
Eleven	iri-na-otu
Twelve	iri-na-abuo
Twenty	iri-abuo
Thirty	iti-ato
One hundred	nari
One thousand	puku
One million	nde
One billion	njeri

Animals

English	Igbo
Bird/hen	Nnunu//okuko
Snake	agwo
Squirrel	osa
Dog	nkita
Eagle	ugo
Goat	ewu
Tortoise	mbe or mbekwu
Antelope	ené or ele
Monkey	enwe
Lion	odum
Elephant	eni
Horse	nyi-nya
Tiger // Agu

Ibo vs. Igbo

I added the citereq specifically because even among those who write "Igbo" as opposed to "Ibo", the Igbo/Ibo with whom I've interacted overwhelmingly simply don't care about how you spell it. Believe me, it's refreshing to talk to people who would rather discuss "real" issues instead of how you choose to spell the name of their ethnic group. That said, the sentence made a quantitative statement, rather than a qualitative one, specifically, that "most Igbo" prefer "Igbo" over "Ibo". If most do, fine, I won't argue with a noteworthy citation. If it's such a big issue, I'm certain such a citation should be quite easy for those who believe this to be the case, to come up with. I haven't seen it, or I'd have simply added a citation to support it. Kol tov, Tomer^talk 08:51, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

Agree with you that the statement needs a citation if included. I have removed the statement altogether because it is not that important now that "Igbo" is already the most common term. I already explained the linguistic background of 'Igbo' above; let me add that the spelling 'Ibo' dates from the period when the Europeans didn't know what to do with the labial-velar stop, or how to pronounce it. To their ears, it sounded most like a heavily pronounced /b/ and therefore they wrote it that way. Later on phoneticists recognized that it in fact was a labial-velar plosive, a phoneme which is quite widespread throughout sub-Saharan Africa, and the digraph /gb/ was introduced. From then on, the spelling 'Igbo' started to be used more widely and to date it is the most common spelling. No need to worry about 'Ibo' anymore, it's simply an archaic term. — mark ✎ 08:56, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

Potential problems with phonology/orthography section

According to the orthography section,

• The digraph "ch" is reportedly used to represent both {/ɓ/ ~ /ɡb͡/} and /ʧ/. My suspicion is that one of these is incorrect.
• The letter "j" represents /ʤ/, however there is no indication of how ʒ is represented (if it is even found in Igbo).
• The letter "r" is said to represent /ɾ/, however the text of the phonology section seems to indicate that /ɾ/ is only used in intervocalic position (/ɹ/ being the apparently "normal" pronunciation), and possibly even then, only in ]a[ certain dialect group[s].

If anyone knows more about this, please make any necessary changes to the article. Cheers, Tomer^talk 19:19, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

Link

The link http://www.igbo911.com is a multimedia igbo language study resources. It is accessed by people from over sixty countries across all continents. The Dialectical lexicon http://www.igbo911.com/lexi/lexi.php is a portal to capture the hundrreds of the variety of dialects. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Igbo911 (talk • contribs) 03:07, 5 September 2009 (UTC) The Link http://www.uwandiigbo.com/wb/ is dead / doesn't work —Preceding unsigned comment added by 91.64.114.178 (talk) 06:55, 22 July 2008 (UTC)

Since When Are Ancient Egyptian And Igbo Related?

Igbo is a Niger-Congo language. Ancient Egyptian is the predecessor of the Coptic language, and also an Afroasiatic language. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.138.218.244 (talk) 11:37, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

It's called "bullshit". Happens on WP quite a bit, but I didn't notice this at the time and I guess no-one else was watching the article. kwami (talk) 20:53, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

Vowel phoneme mismatch

The chart representing the writing system contains phoneme symbols that are not represented on the vowel phoneme chart. /ʊ/,/ɔ/,/ɪ/. I think the vowel phoneme chart should probably be changed to agree with the text, rather than the other way around, is that right? PRB (talk) 09:46, 16 June 2010 (UTC)

The image is phonemic, the text phonetic. They're showing two different things: the ATR pairs vs. articulation ignoring ATR. If you wish to be precise, both are wrong. Assuming that RTR is marked and the others unmarked, the actual vowels would appear to be [i, ɪ̙ u ʊ̙ e o ɒ̙ a]. (The low back RTR vowel is very low.) The forms without diacritics are easier to read, but we need to be clear that there's more going on than that. — kwami (talk) 10:02, 16 June 2010 (UTC)

Somewhere on the page there is a mistake, because there is contradiction, not just a lack of clarity. According to the text, both the image and the table are phonemic, so there should be harmony. Sadly, I don't know what the correction should be, otherwise I'd "be bold". PRB (talk) 14:39, 16 June 2010 (UTC)

That (what I said above) was a bad way of putting it. The two transcriptions have chosen different phonetic elements to represent the phonemic differences. One chose RTR, and the other vowel-space position. Both are distinctive, and therefore both are relevant, but they're also redundant, so one can be ignored. But which we ignore is arbitrary.

We have the same possibility in English, and where different dictionaries will choose different representations of English vowels. The vowels of sit and seat, for example, can be transcribed /I/ and /i/, taking vowel quality to be distinctive, or /i/ and /i:/, taking length to be distinctive. Neither is incorrect; phonetically, they're [I] and [i:], which tie the two together. — kwami (talk) 19:34, 16 June 2010 (UTC)