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Monday, March 19, 2012

Grammar 4: The Ubiqitious Verb "To Be"

If you're reading this, chances are you've already met our enigmatic friend, the verb 'To Be'. If you haven't, go back to Grammar 3, and check him out, then come back here.

This post is about the verb To Be's most common manifestation, the "Ọọ" form. Specifically, Ọọ is a form of the "Ibụ" variant of the verb "To Be".

The "Ọọ" form is a form of the verb To Be that means "It is" or "It was"

It is the simplest way to make a sentence in Igbo and really really easy.

The form is "Ọọ XYZ" where XYZ is any word.

It translates to "It is XYZ." or "It was XYZ."

Okay, let's try it out.

In the last post, we looked at some common Igbo nouns that are encountered in every day speech.

We'll use three of them in our examples below.

Listen   Mili - Water

Listen   Afia - Market

Listen   Nwoke - Man


Examples:

Listen   Ọọ mili - It is water / It was water

Listen   Ọọ nwoke - It is a man / It was a man | It is men / It was men

Listen   Ọọ afia - It is a market / It was a market


It's that easy!

Just put Ọọ before any word to form a sentence.

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