Igbo

Story

Igbo is a tonal language of the Volta-Niger branch of Niger-Congo, spoken across five southeastern Nigerian states by one of the country's largest ethnic groups. The Igbo people developed Nsibidi, an ancient system of graphic ideograms used in sacred and legal contexts, which spread to neighbouring peoples but was not a full phonographic script for the language. A syllabary specifically for Igbo was created in the late 1950s by Nwagu Aneke, a rural diviner who claimed ancestral spirits revealed the symbols to him, and he used it to fill hundreds of diary entries. The current Latin-based Onwu orthography, standardised by a Nigerian government committee in 1962, includes three vowels with underdots to mark distinct vowel qualities and tones are marked with acute and grave accents.

At a glance

• Also known as: Asụsụ Igbo
• Family: Niger-Congo
• Region: West Africa
• Speakers: 34M (primarily l1 speakers in southeastern nigeria; ethnologue (2023) gives 34 million native speakers; total including l2 approximately 34 to 36 million)
• Writing system: Latin (Onwu orthography, in use since 1962)
• Greeting: Nnoo (welcome / hello)

Spoken in

Nigeria

Common questions