We Got Featured!!!!

The Ndebe Project is featured this week on African Digital Art as part of the fourth installment of their African Weekly Inspiration.

Click the screenshot to visit our feature

A big thank to African Digital Art for featuring us, and thank you to everyone that loves and supports the Ndebe Project.

Scripters Needed!!

The Ndebe Project is looking for Scripters - people to test the script. It's very easy and takes very little time. Every couple of days a short list of words to be transcribed will be posted and we would like Scripters to transcribe the list and scan or take photos of their writing and post them in the group gallery along with feedback about the process. We would like to see how well other people are able to write with the script and the feedback helps in making adjustments. The project is as you know, totally open source so there is no compensation for Scripting (but there's no compulsion to script either) but we appreciate all the help we get and promise to express our gushing thanks to those who volunteer small portions of their time to Script.

If you'd like to Script please let us know either in the comments here or on the group page on Facebook.

Grammar 5: The Infinitive

The Igbo Infinitive is a verb form representing 'to + any action'.

In Igbo, The Infinitive is formed by adding any verb root to the suffix "I" (pronounced ee - high toned).

For instance, the infinitive of the verb root bia would be Ibia (I + Bia).

Below is a list of verb roots and their infinitive forms showing how to form the Infinitive.

Words Used in This Lesson:

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Grammar 4: Euphony of The First Subject Pronoun

In Grammar 3, it was mentioned that the First Person Singular Subject Pronoun "I" is represented in Igbo by either "M" or "N".

This post discusses when to use "M" or "N".

Igbo, like most other languages has developed in such a way that the speech is not just practical for communication, but sounds nice when speaking as well.

There is absolutely no grammatical incentive for this switch between "M" and "N", rather this irregularity has developed over thousands of years in order to make Igbo phrases sound more pleasing to the ear. This phenomenon is known as Euphony. Since the 'M' sound tends to glide into certain other consonants, it is adopted to mean "I" whenever the following word (most often a verb) begins with such a consonant sound.

As a result,

The "M" sound should always be used with words beginning with B, F, Gb, Kp, M, Nw, P, and V

The "N" sound should always be used with words beginning with Ch, D, G, Gw, H,J, K, Kw, L, M, N, N-dot, Ny, R, T, S, S-dot, W, Y, and Z.

Most Igbo words beginning with vowels are nouns, adjectives, adverbs, or prepositions. Very very few are verbs* as such, you won't encounter a situation where you will have to decide which sound to use with the first person of a verb beginning with a vowel.

This chart is a quick and easy guide to which sound to use with which consonants :

*There are some Igbo verb forms in which the first person singular is formed using a vowel. This will be discussed in later posts.

History 1: Meet your (very recent) Ancestors

The following pictures are of two Igbo women in different traditional Igbo attire. The first is of an Igbo woman wearing the huge Igbo ankle plates that were very fashionable at the time, a torque, a short wrapper and a head scarf. Notice also the mbubu marks that run down the middle of her torso and on her arms. These marks are raised scar bumps that are made on a girl either right before or right after she is pregnant for the first time.

The huge ankle plates deliberately overlap in order to give the woman a rolling gait when she walks which is of course, more attractive. At the time, girls were so crazy about them (and the effect they had on men) that they wouldn't take them off, and many fashionable young Igbo girls would even sleep with their legs hanging off the bed just so they could keep them on at all times!

Also, covering the breasts is optional in traditional Igbo society. Girls and women could wear tops or they might choose not to. It was entirely up to the personal discretion of the individual and public display of the breasts was not frowned upon at all.


In the second picture below, a young girl is dressed in all her finery for her wedding. She is wearing a beautiful woven hat with a line of coral beads coming down the middle and ending in a loop across her forehead, a necklace, bracelets and armbands, coral jigida (waist beads) around her waist, anklets, leg bands, and of course, a huge ivory bracelet to denote her exulted status as a bride. In her right hand she carries an intricately carved wooden staff and in her left hand she carries a horse tail whisk. She is also wearing a waist cloth (ogodo) that passes between her legs and hangs on the other side to cover her privates and buttocks. This young lady hasn't had her mbubu done yet but will when she has her first child.
What is fascinating about these pictures is that both of them were taken in 1922. Most Igbo people have no idea that this is the real traditional Igbo dress because Igbo children are not taught about their ancestors in school. In fact, it is very rare to be taught about anything in Nigerian history that happened before 1960.

The fact that these photographs were taken in 1922 is extremely significant because it shows that most of Igbo traditional culture was still preserved and highly pervasive as recently as the 1920s and 1930s before the missionaries and the colonists managed to wipe it out.

Now a lot of people when they think of traditional Igbo attire immediately think of something like this:

What most people don't realise is that these clothes are fashions that have arisen as a result of European influence in Nigeria during colonialism and especially in Eastern Nigeria where most Igbo people are because of the extensive activities of the Catholic Missionaries who weren't exactly fond of bare breasts.

Most of the fabrics used in so-called 'traditional' Igbo clothing today isn't even Igbo in origin. Igbo fabrics will be discussed in more detail in future 'History' posts on The Ndebe Project.

What does this mean for you? If your grandparent was born in 1912, they would have been 10 years old when this picture was taken and they would be 97 today. That means that quite a number of the people that were born or that were children during this time are still alive today. If you're lucky a grandparent (or a great grandparent if you're fortunate to have one) might still remember stunning and precious details about their childhood especially the aspects that have almost been destroyed by westernization such as traditional Igbo dress, and certain customs.

Have fun mining your grandparents, great grandparents and those of your friends for information!! You'll be surprised and delighted at what you find!

The original photos can be found here (along with the date taken):

http://www.fotosearch.com/IST516/1631591/

http://www.fotosearch.com/IST513/1631578/

Grammar 3: Subject and Object Pronouns

In Igbo there are six subject pronouns: The singular and plural forms of the three persons.


*Note: The first person subject pronoun in Igbo can either be M or N depending on the word that follows it. This phonological irregularity is ensure the easily glide of speech in Igbo. For example, you should say: ' M bia' for I came, but ' N yi ' for I wore.

Object Pronouns:
Usually, there is a marked difference between direct and indirect object pronouns in most languages. In Igbo however, the Direct Object Pronouns and the Indirect Object Pronouns are the same.



Order of Igbo Pronouns:
In this first example, the order of a simple Igbo sentence is shown, and the object pronoun is used as a Direct Object. Note also the use of the 1st person singular as 'M' :

In this next sentence, a noun is included as the direct object causing the object pronoun 'ya' to become an indirect object. Note also the use of the 1st person singular as 'N' :

Order of Object Pronouns:
The following example shows the correct order in a sentence where there are both Direct AND Indirect Object Pronouns:*Note that in Igbo one cannot say 'to them'. Literally 'to them' would be represented by just 'them'.

In order to learn Igbo effectively, you must realise that Igbo and English are not parallel languages through which translations may bounce from one side to the other. If you can make this distinction and dissociate the two languages, comprehending Igbo grammar will become much easier.

'I gave them it' is the literal way to express 'I gave it to them'. Of course, when translating to English, 'I gave them it' should be translated as ' I gave it to them'.

Vocabulary:

Words Used in This Lesson:

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Speech 1: Vowel Tones

Igbo is a tonal language. If one thing alone is important when it comes to speaking Igbo, it's definitely tone.

Igbo words change in meaning as the vowel tones they contain are altered.

In the following video by listening carefully you should be able to hear the difference in tone as the narrator goes along.



Note: You will notice that the vowels (in red) are all completely different for each of the tones of the same sound. This is what makes spelling, reading, and writing infinitely better under the Ndebe system than in the latin system (displayed in the yellow boxes as a guide).

All the examples used in the video are monotonal i.e. all the vowels in the word share the same tone.

Monotonal words are very easy to grasp and are an easy introduction to tone.

Multi-tonal words will be examined later on.

Writing 1: Basic Forms

Consonants:

In order to write in Igbo there are 11 basic forms you must master.

All the consonants are made up of two parts:

and,

The radicals are joined to the stems by a horizontal bar, like so:

The following video demonstrates writing the basic forms that make up the script:



Different consonants are formed by combining different stems and radicals.
The chart below shows how to do this, and can be used as a reference when reading.

The consonants in the chart are grouped according to STEM. Each horizontal stem line represents a sound group.

Vowels:

Vowels on the other hand have to be memorized. Since vowels are used so frequently in Igbo you should have very little trouble becoming familiar with the vowels with practice. There are eight vowels in Igbo broken into three sub-groups:

• High-Tone vowels
• Mid-Tone vowels
• Low-Tone vowels

Please refer to Lesson1 for the video on how to pronounce the letters

Grammar 2: The Article

The Definite and Indefinite articles in Igbo are known as Zero Articles i.e. They do not exist.*

Generally, nouns in Igbo represent both definite and indefinite articles within the noun.

For example:
*Exception:

The number 'one' can be used to take the place of the indefinite article.

Words Used In This Lesson:

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Grammar 1: The Alphabet

The old Igbo alphabet contained 36 letters. The Igbo alphabet under the Ndebe system contains 52 letters. The extra letters account for vowel tones that could previously not be expressed using the old alphabet alone.

The following video will guide you through the Igbo alphabet and aid with pronunciation as well as the ever important task of differentiating tone.



Under the Ndebe system, Igbo is written from Left to Right with vowels going on top of the consonants that precede them.

=
=

When a word begins with a vowel, the vowel stands alone and two dots are added to the vowel to create the standalone form.

Below is the Igbo Alphabet (Click to Enlarge):

Igbo Alphabet - Ndebe writing system

Words Used In This Lesson:

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