Igbo Grammar

Table of contents

• Language and Pronunciation
• Personal Pronouns
• Present Tense and Imperative
• Numerals
• Infinitives, Participles and Auxiliaries
• Adjectives
• Tense and Suffixes
• Parts of the Body
• Prepositions
• Interrogative Pronouns
• Conjunctions
• Orthography

Grammar: Language and Pronunciation

Igbo language is one of the many languages spoken in Nigeria. Since its independence, the main languages in Nigeria have been Hausa, Igbo and Yoruba, also known by the word ‘wazobia’, i.e. ‘wa’ in Yoruba, ‘zo’ in Hausa, and ‘bia’ in Igbo, all meaning ‘to come’. Igbo is predominantly spoken in Abia, Imo, Enugu, Anambra, Ebonyi and parts of Rivers and Delta states. Speaking English, you can get by in most parts of Igboland, though in some very remote areas, only Igbo is understood.

Igbo language is classified as a Niger-Congo language and belongs to the Kwa sub-group of languages spoken in sub-Saharan Africa. It is estimated that some of these Kwa languages have been spoken in roughly the same locations as today for over 4,000 years. Main characteristics for the Kwa languages are the tones and vowel harmony.

Tones (also called contrastive pitch) are used to differentiate words that are written identically. For example, the same word in Igbo may have four different meanings depending on its pitch. In tone languages, pitch is a property of words, but what is important is not absolute pitch but relative pitch. Igbo language makes use of two main tones: the high tone (such as u as in “rule”) is pronounced with the tongue bent towards the roof of the mouth. The low tone (such as a in “father”) is produced with the tongue flat and low in the mouth and with the mouth a bit wider than for high tones. Considering the high and low tones, akwa can mean either weeping (high-high tone), cloth (high-low), egg (low-high) or bridge (low-low).

Vowel harmony involves words which are either built up of a combination of syllables with an i, e, o or u vowel, or on the other hand a combination involving syllables with an a, ï, ö or ü vowel, for example:

Igbo Igbo anü meat, animal

ezi pig ülö house

Syllables with both combinations of vowels rarely occur in one word, unless it is a compound word or compound verb. Also, some of the suffixes do not harmonise with the verb stem.

Vowel Harmony

Many words in the language are built up from smaller words, not to say for a few English words that have been copied directly. There are a wide variety of dialects, some of which resemble each other, though others might have totally different vocabularies and pronunciations, though word order and tone are consistent throughout the grammatical Igbo structure. The two main dialect zones, Onitsha and Owerri, have most words in common, but there are some differences in the vocabulary, for example:

Onitsha	Owerri
kedu	olee	what, which
one	ole	how many
fa	ha	they
afa	aha	name

Igbo written language is phonetic and it uses most of the English alphabet. The consonants are similar to the use as in the English language, though there are separate combinations of consonants, i.e. gb, gh, gw, kp, kw, nw, ny and sh, which are official recognised letters. The sh combination is hardly used. In addition, there is one other character, ñ, which is a voiced nasal ‘n’. These characters and some of the various combinations are listed with their pronunciation below:

	as in	pronounced as	meaning
gb	egbe	e-gbe	hawk
gh	agha	a-ga	war
gw	gwa	g-wa	to tell
kp	akpa	a-pa	bag
kw	kwaa	kwaa	also, too
mm	mmiri	m-miri	water
nn	nna	n-na	father
ñ	añülï	anju-li	happy, merry
nw	nwa	n-wa	child
ny	nyaa	n-ya	to drive

For the vowels, the difference is more distinguishing. Some of the vowels have an umlaut (this is according to the New Standard Orthography; in previous versions of Igbo orthography there was a dot below the vowel) above the letter indicating a different pronunciation:

vowel	pronounced as in
a	arm
e	set
i	see
ï	pit
o	go
ö	author
u	put (verb)
ü	shot

The Igbo alphabet as found in dictionaries, is in the following order:

a, b, c, ch, d, e, f, gb, gh, gw, h, i, ï, j, k, kp, kw, l, m, n, ñ, nw, ny, o, ö, p, r, s, sh, t, u, ü, v, w, y, z

Grammar: Personal Pronouns

The pronouns in Igbo language have two forms: separable and inseparable. The inseparable forms only apply to the singular pronouns and are found as the single subject in direct combination with the main verbs of a sentence, as in

bi	live (verb stem)
ebi m	I live
i bi	you live
o bi	he/she lives

Note that for the first person singular, the m follows the verb stem.

Separable pronouns are not confined to its sole purpose as a subject with a verb and can be used as a subject, direct and indirect object, for example:

buru	carry (verb stem)
anyï buru gï	we carry you
unu buru mü	you carry me
mü na gï buru ya	me and you carry him

They can also follow a noun in possessive relationship:

di	husband	di m	my husband
		di gï	your husband
		di ya	her husband
nwa	child	nwa m	my child
		nwa anyï	our child

Grammar: Present Tense and Imperative

For the present tense of verbs, the verb stem is used. If the personal pronoun follows the verb (which is the case for the first person inseparable pronoun), an a- or e- prefix is attached to the verb stem in line with the vowel harmony, i.e. an a- prefix for verb stems with an a, ï, ö or ü vowel; an e- prefix for verb stems with an i, e, o or u vowel:

This prefix falls away with the other pronouns. The second and third person inseparable pronouns harmonise with the verb stems:

Separable pronouns do not require harmonisation:

Other example:

The negative present tense is formed by harmonising the verb stem with the harmonising prefix a or e and suffix ghi or ghï in the following manner:

The imperative uses the verb stem without any prefix:

nye	give
gwa	tell

The imperative can be followed by a noun or pronoun:

The negative imperative is formed with the prefix e- or a- and suffix –ne or –la, both harmonising with the verb stem:

Grammar: Numerals

otu	1
abüö	2
atö	3
anö	4
ise	5
isii	6
asaa	7
asatö	8
itolu	9
iri	10
iri na otu	11
iri na atö	13
iri abüö	20
iri abüö na otu	21
iri atö	30
iri atö na otu	31
iri asatö	80
iri itolu	90
narï	100
narï abüö	200
puku	1,000
puku atö na iri abüö na iri	3,210
nde	1,000,000
ijeri	1,000,000,000
ökara	half

Only otu and ökara precede the noun; the other numbers follow the noun:

Note that the noun does not change if it is in plural.

The ordinal numbers are as follows:

Examples:

Grammar: Infinitives, Participles and Auxiliaries

Infinitives have a vowel prefix, i or ï, harmonising with the vowel of the verb stem.

Examples:

The negative infinitive has the e- or a- prefix and ghi or ghï suffix, both harmonising with the vowel of the verb stem:

Participles are formed by a preceding vowel, e- or a-, and the verb stem:

The participle is used with an auxiliary to specify its action. The auxiliary precedes the participle and is connected with it through a hyphen if immediately followed by the participle.

Examples:

na	used as auxiliary to specify continuing action in the present:

ana m azü anü	I am buying meat
ö na-esi anü	he is cooking meat

ga	used as auxiliary to indicate future action:

aga m azü anü	I will buy meat
ö ga-esi anü	he will cook meat

The negative form has an a- (or e-) prefix and ghï (or ghi) suffix attached to the auxiliary:

Grammar: Adjectives

In Igbo, adjectives can immediately precede or follow the noun or pronoun to which it belongs. Most commonly used adjectives are:

Examples:

If the adjective is not directly preceding the noun or pronoun, the noun form of the adjective is used:

Examples:

The same principle as described above, applies to demonstrative adjectives, they can only follow or precede the noun immediately:

These adjectives also form the demonstrative pronouns:

Examples:

Note:
The verb ‘to be’ can be translated by three different verbs: bü, dï and nö. The verb bü is most commonly used for ‘to be’; dï is used with a noun and not adjectives and indicates the quality or location of something ; nö is used for the presence of someone in a location:

Grammar: Tense and Suffixes

In Igbo language, verbs do not distinguish between present and past tense. The meaning of the verb is generally changed by the suffix that specifies the action in the present or past. Some of these suffixes harmonise with the verb stem, others do not, and sometimes multiple suffixes can follow each other in a combination.

The most commonly suffixes used are:

Examples:

There are more verb tenses in Igbo language. One tense is used to start a conversation or speech or is used in a sentence introduced by another verb. This tense is formed by a harmonising a- or e- prefix with the verb stem:

To go in more details would go beyond the scope of this book, and I would suggest to read the grammar books mentioned in the references.

Parts of the Body

Author depicted by young neighbour

Grammar: Prepositions

Prepositions are words used before a noun or pronoun to specify a place, position or time. In Igbo, there is only one preposition na. When preceding a vowel, it has the tone of that vowel and is written n’ instead.

In combination with a noun, it can specify the location of the preposition in more detail:

Examples:

Grammar: Interrogative Pronouns

Interrogatives are used to ask a question. In Igbo, a question can only be initiated by either an interrogative or a personal pronoun.

Following interrogatives are commonly used:

The pronoun could be followed by ka or ihe in case the interrogative is not the sole subject of the sentence.

Examples:

If the interrogative is missing in a question, the verb must be preceded by a pronoun:

Grammar: Conjunctions

Words that can connect two words or sentences are called conjunctions. Most of the conjunctions start with an initial consonant:

Examples:

Orthography

The official Igbo orthography refers to a characterset with dots below the characters instead of umlauts above them. However, this characterset is not yet internationalized and accessible through webbrowsers. Once this characterset will be available for webbrowsers, this website will be updated. For now, a PDF file using the correct character notation is downloadable here (right-click and "Save as" if you want to download the file). To view this file you need Adobe Reader. If this is not yet installed on your PC you can obtain this software from the Adobe website.