Sedi Nyanata :: Negation in the Aorist Tense

In this post we're going to look at a lot of examples of the first and most basic Igbo tense - The Aorist.

This tense is what you're going to use most of the time to make simple Igbo sentences.

This post will explain how to negate in the aorist tense.

Here we go.

Look at the following sentences.


Fa fu nni.  - They saw (some) food.

The verb root root in this sentence is "fu" (see).

In English, the negative version of this sentence would  be "They DID NOT see (some) food."

Igbo isn't like English. .... At all.

In Igbo, verbs are made negative by means of Suffixes.

If you don't know what a suffix is, a Suffix is a grammatical particle that is attached to the end of a verb or verb root to change its meaning.

Igbo has A LOT of suffixes.

In fact, practically EVERYTHING in Igbo involves suffixes and prefixes of some sort.


Now back to the topic.

In Igbo, in order to make a verb in the aorist tense negative, you add the suffix -ro  to the verb root.

In the sentence "Fa fu nni", the verb root is "fu" (see).

To make this negative, we add -ro to this verb root, making "furo".

Now plug that back into the sentence, and you've made the sentence negative.


Fa fu nni (they saw food) = Fa FURO nni (they DID NOT see food)

Pretty easy huh?

Grammar 6: The Aorist Tense :: Sedi Nyanata

In the last post we briefly mentioned Sedi Nyanata ( the Aorist Tense)*.

This post is going to be all about the Aorist Tense ( you don't have to memorize the Igbo name) so hang tight.

The Aorist Tense, despite being the simplest and most basic of all the Igbo tenses, is a very tricky thing to define.

The easiest way to explain it is to compare it to another language.

Let us compare Igbo tenses with the following languages - English and Japanese.

English  has three main tenses - Present, Past, and Future

This is very familiar. I buy, I bought, and I will buy.


Japanese on the other hand has only TWO main tenses - Past and Not-the-Past (or Non-Past)

Past - Inu deshita ( It was a dog )

Not-the-Past - Inu desu (It is a dog ... or it will be a dog )

In other words, anything you say in Japanese, that is not expressly in past tense, could be happening now, or some time in the future.


So, how is this related to Igbo?

Simple.

Igbo is just like Japanese. It has only TWO main tenses.

The only difference between Igbo and Japanese is that, while Japanese is divided into Past and Not-the-Past, Igbo is divided into Future and Not-the-Future.

Future - O ga bu nkita ( It will be a dog)

Not-the-Future - O bu nkita (It is a dog .... or it was a dog )

This means that anything you say in Igbo that is not expressly in the Future could be happening now, or it may have happened yesterday or at some other time in the past.

This tense group that I've been referring to as "Not-the-Future" is what is called The Aorist Tense.

The Aorist Tense is a special tense in which whatever you are saying could be happening presently or it could have happened in the past.



* - [ Sedi = Tense; Nya na Ta = Yesterday and Today ]

Syntax 1: Putting It All Together

Now that we've talked a little about verbs and nouns and pronouns, you need to know how to stitch all those elements together to form a coherent sentence!

To make things simple, this first syntax lesson will deal only with how to make sentences in the Aorist Tense.

We haven't discussed the Aorist Tense yet, (we will in the next post!) but all you need to know for now is that it is the most common tense used in Igbo and it is the easiest of all the tenses.

Now on to sentence making.

The general sentence structure in Igbo is S-P-P-V-S-O-A

Don't be scared.

This stands for:-

Subject - Particle - Prefix- Verb ( root ) - Suffix - Object - Auxiliary

The key above shows you the general order in which all these elements should go when making a sentence in Igbo.

Let's try it!

Subject	Particle	Prefix	Verb Root	Suffix	Object	Auxiliary
Listen   Emeka	na	e	nye	kwa	fa	enye

This table above is an example of an sentence that contains all these elements.

However, as you go from tense to tense, you will see that some of these grammatical elements will be dropped (or added) depending on what tense you are using or what you are trying to say.

Now that you have an idea of the main structure of an Igbo sentence, let's look at the table again as it should appear for the Aorist Tense.

Subject	Particle	Prefix	Verb Root	Suffix	Object	Auxiliary
Listen   Emeka			nye		fa

Aorist sentence

Notice the difference?

As mentioned before, the Aorist Tense is the simplest tense (and most common) in Igbo so its sentence structure is very basic.

In this sentence, there is no Particle, no Prefix, no Suffix, and no Auxiliary.

It's just Subject, Verb (root), and Object.

Emeka (the subject), gave/gives (the verb), them (the object).

Easy peasy lemon squeezy!

That's all there is to it.

To make your first basic sentence, just put in a subject (the party performing the action), a verb (the action being performed), and an object (the party receiving the action or upon whom the action is being performed).

Since we already have a list of nouns, pronouns, verbs and other vocabulary, let's try and make some simple Aorist Tense sentences using the formula we've learned above.

Subject	Particle	Prefix	Verb Root	Suffix	Object	Auxiliary
Listen   Anyi			we		uno
Listen   Nwaanyi			gote		nni
Listen   Madu			je		afia
O			di		ndu
Listen   Unu			me		ya
Listen   Nkechi			rapu		olu
Listen   Fa			we		mili

Grammar 5 : Personal Pronouns Part 1 - Subject and Object Pronouns

Pronouns are some of the most commonly encountered elements in most languages.

Personal pronouns stand in for people when you don't know their names, don't want to mention names too often, or are simply trying to gossip about people but can't get away from them quickly enough.

In some languages, you don't use personal pronouns a whole lot (e.g. Japanese .... although, "you" is used a lot, but other pronouns not so much)

Igbo isn't like those languages. Igbo LOVES its pronouns and the personal variety are no exception.

So, without further ado, let's look at the first set of pronouns that every successful Igbo learner needs to know.

Subject Pronouns

These are the pronouns that indicate who is performing the action.

Here they are below:

English	Igbo
I	M (when the next word begins with B, M,P, or F ) N (for all other words)
You (singular)	I (pronounced "eeee")
He / She / It	O (pronounced "o" as in Hot)
We	Anyi
You (plural)	Unu
They	Fa

Object Pronouns

These are the pronouns that indicate who is receiving the action.

Here they are below:

English	Igbo
Me	M (Pronounced like Mmm )
You (singular)	Gi (sometimes "I" if you want to sound really casual)
He / She / It	Ya
Us	Anyi
You (plural)	Unu
They	Fa

And now you know...

In the next lesson I'll explain how to put all the things we've learned so far together into your first complete sentence!

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.

Vocabulary 2: The 20 Most Common Nouns in Igbo

Here's a list of the twenty most common nouns in Igbo. These are words that you hear every day, so learn them quickly and you'll be eavesdropping on Igbo conversations in no time.

#	Noun	Tone	Meaning	Listen
1.	Madụ	HIGH-LOW	Person / People	Madụ
2.	Nwa	HIGH	Baby / Child	Nwa
3.	Ụzọ	HIGH-LOW	Way / Path / Road	Ụzọ
4.	Ifẹ	HIGH-HIGH	Thing	Ifẹ
5.	Nwoke	HIGH-MID	Man	Nwoke
6.	Nwaanyi	MID-LOW	Woman	Nwaanyi
7.	Anya	HIGH-HIGH	Eye	Anya
8.	Aka	HIGH-HIGH	Hand	Aka
9.	Nni	HIGH-HIGH	Food	Nni
10.	Mili	HIGH-MID	Water	Mili
11.	Ẹbẹ	HIGH-HIGH	Place	Ẹbẹ
12.	Ndụ	HIGH-LOW	Life	Ndụ
13.	Arọ	HIGH-LOW	Year	Arọ
14.	Ọlụ	HIGH-HIGH	Work	Ọlụ
15.	Akwa	HIGH-LOW	Clothes / Cloth / Fabric	Akwa
16.	Nsogbu	HIGH-LOW-MID	Trouble / Problem	Nsogbu
17.	Afia	HIGH-HIGH	Market	Afia
18.	Ụnọ	HIGH-LOW	Building / House	Ụnọ
19.	Bẹ	HIGH	Home	Bẹ
20.	Ọnụ	HIGH-HIGH	Mouth	Ọnụ

Practically 70% of all Igbo spoken involves these nouns in some way, shape, or form. You can't go wrong learning these to start with.

Vocabulary 1: The 20 Most Common Verbs in Igbo

Ever wondered what the most common words in the Igbo language are? Now's your chance to find out.

Here's a list of the twenty most common verbs in the Igbo language. Knowing the verbs on this list inside out is ABSOLUTELY essential to being able to communicate in Igbo. These are the verbs without knowledge of which your life in a purely Igbo speaking region would be completely miserable so learn them as quickly as possible.

#	Infinitive	Root	Meaning	Listen
1.	Ibụ	Bụ	To Be	Ibụ
2.	Idi	Di	To Be	Idi
3.	Iwẹ	Wẹ	To Have, To Get, To Take	Iwẹ
4.	Imẹ	Mẹ	To Do, To Make	Imẹ
5.	Isi	Si	To Say	Isi
6.	Ijẹ	Jẹ	To Go	Ijẹ
7.	Ima	Ma	To Know	Ima
8.	Ifụ	Fụ	To See	Ifụ
9.	Ibia	Bia	To Come	Ibia
10.	Ichẹ	Chẹ	To Think, To Wait For	Ichẹ
11.	Inẹ	Nẹ	To Look	Inẹ
12.	Ichọ	Chọ	To Want, To Look For, To Find	Ichọ
13.	Inyẹ	Nyẹ	To Give	Inyẹ
14.	Iji	Ji	To Use, To Hold	Iji
15.	Igwa	Gwa	To Tell	Igwa
16.	Ijụ	Jụ	To Ask, To Refuse	Ijụ
17.	Ilu	Lu	To Work, To Build	Ilu
18.	Ili	Li	To Eat	Ili
19.	Irapụ	Rapụ	To Leave	Rapụ
20.	Ikpọ	Kpọ	To Call	Ikpọ

Practically 70% of all Igbo spoken involves these verbs in some way, shape, or form. You can't go wrong learning these to start with.

Grammar 3: The Mysterious Verb "To Be"

In Grammar 2, I talked about the Infinitive. Now you may or may not have noticed, but missing in the list of verbs I gave in the last post was one of the commonest verbs in any language, much less Igbo: The verb "To Be".

I deliberately omitted the verb "To Be" from the list because the verb "To Be"s situation in Igbo is very complicated .... to say the least.

While in English there is only one verb "To Be", the Igbo version of the verb is an international master of disguise.

It has many forms and lurks in many shadowy corners waiting to jump out at you when you didn't even realise it was in the sentence. And when you think you need it to say something? It simply isn't there.

Needless to say, the Igbo verb "To Be" is not to be taken lightly and requires the utmost attention.

Here are the three most common forms "To Be" in Igbo, but by no means, the only ones.

Listen   Ibụ - To be

Listen   Idi - To be

Listen   Inọ - To be


Telling the difference: 

If you're familiar with the Spanish language (a language which like Igbo has more than one form of the verb To Be) understanding the difference between the three above will be pretty obvious to you. For the rest of you, here's how you tell the difference:

As a rule of thumb,

Ibụ  - expresses identity, essential qualities, personality, occupation, and origin.

Listen   Identity  - She is a Nigerian (Ọ bụ onye Naijiriya)
Listen   Essential Qualities - I am a woman (M bụ  nwaanyi)
Listen   Occupation - You (all) are doctors (Unu bụ  dibia )
Listen   Origin - They are from Anambra ( Fa bụ  ndi Anambara)


Idi - expresses condition, characteristics, emotions, and TEMPORARY location

Listen   Condition - It is alive  ( Ọ di ndụ  )
Listen   Characteristics - You are tall ( I di ogonogo )
Listen   Emotions - He is happy (Ọ di anwụli )
Listen   Temporary location - It is there (Ọ di ẹbẹ a)


Inọ - expresses SEMI-PERMANENT and PERMANENT location

Listen   More Permanent Location - She is in Abuja  (Ọ nọ  Abuja)

There are of course other forms of the Verb not shown here. 

Its most common form, the "Ọọ" form will be discussed in the next lesson.

Grammar 2: 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).

Igbo Infinitive =  i + Verb Root

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.

Verb Root	Infinitive	Meaning	Listen
Bia	Ibia	To Come	Ibia
Wẹ	Iwẹ	To Have, To Get, To Take
Mẹ	Imẹ	To Do, To Make
Si	Isi	To Say
Jẹ	Ijẹ	To Go
Ma	Ima	To Know
Nyẹ	Inyẹ	To Give
Chẹ	Ichẹ	To Think
Nẹ	Inẹ	To Look
Fụ	Ifụ	To See
Jụ	Ijụ	To Ask, To Refuse

Now you know how to form the Infinitive. It's really really easy. Whenever you want to say "To do something" you just add the infinitive marker "i" to the verb root!

"i" (infinitive marker) + "chẹ" (verb root meaning 'Think')

=

ichẹ

(To think)

Grammar 1: Igbo Sounds :: Mkpọtụ Igbo

Where do you start when you want to learn a language?

At the beginning of course!

You can't learn Igbo if you don't know the sounds that make up the Igbo language so this is probably one of the most important lessons to learn.

Igbo is made up of consonant sounds and vowel sounds.

The consonant sounds are not a big deal, it's the vowels you should keep an eye out for. 

Because Igbo is a tonal language, each of the vowels have different tones (ranging from high to low).

The most common tones are High and Low, but occasionally, you'll come across a tricky mid tone that is always rising.

Vowel Sounds

Listen   A (AH) as in Cat	Listen   E (AY) as in Fame	Listen   Ẹ (EH) as in Bed
Listen   I (EE) as in Pin	Listen   O (O) as in Show	Listen   Ọ (O) as in Hot
Listen   Ụ (U) as in Put	Listen   U (UU)as in Shoot

Consonant Sounds

B (as in Bee)	Listen   CH (as in Chair)	D (as in Dog)	F (as in Food)	G (as in Goat)
Listen   GB (as in Gbenga)	Listen   GH (as in Ghee)	Listen   GW (as in Guido)	H (as in House)	J (as in Jump)
K (as in Kangaroo)	Listen   KP	Listen   KW (as in Queen)	L	M
N	Listen   NW	Listen   NY	P	R
S	Listen   SH	T	V	W
Y	Z (as in Zebra)

These are the basic sounds needed to speak Igbo

Lesson 1: Tones, Sounds, and Characters

Igbo is a tonal language and this means that while it is made up of sounds like any other language, varying the tone of the sounds in Igbo changes the meaning of what is being said. As a result, when speaking Igbo, you must be very careful to express the correct tone or you could find yourself saying some very embarrassing things. (Case in point, Ike can mean strength, power, energy, - among other things - or anus depending on the tone)

Since the purpose of this blog is to teach the Ndebe Igbo writing system, all Igbo words will be written in Ndebe and Loma (Roman letters/Latin characters) will only be used for clarification.

Sounds and Characters

Each of the individual sounds that make up the Igbo language is represented by its own character. Below are the Igbo sounds (in Loma) and their characters (Ndebe).

Tips for Writing

When writing Igbo the characters for consonants and vowels are written very differently.

For consonantal characters, there are five basic stems and six basic radicals which can be interchanged to form the various characters that represent the consonant sounds. Each stem and radical has its own name.

These consonantal characters that are formed in this manner are collectively referred to as [NAME]

Here is a handy chart to help you remember all the [NAME]:

The vowel characters on the other hand are collectively referred to as [NAME] and must be memorised as they are. (Don't worry, it's much easier than you think!!! =D)

Tones

Now about those pesky tones. Tonal variations in Igbo have scores if not hudnreds of subtleties but generally speaking there are three broad tones: A Low Tone, a High Tone, and a Rising Tone.

The low and high tones are extremely easy to identify and self explanatory but the rising tone is perhaps a bit trickier. The third tone is called a rising tone for a reason. What this means is that a sound that carries a rising tone is higher than the low tone and tends to rise towards the high tone but is still MOST DEFINITELY LOWER than the High Tone.



A good judge of whether a sound has a rising tone is to compare it to a confirmed high tone (such as  Aka - hand).


Do not judge a suspected rising tone by comparing it to a low tone because a rising tone will always sound high right after a low tone.

In Igbo only two consonant sounds bear tones:  (N) and  (M), (and this is only in certain cases) but all vowel sounds bear tones all the time. For this reason, when writing Igbo, there are three versions of each vowel, one for the low tone, one for the rising tone, and one for the high tone. When N or M carry tones, it is denoted by strokes indicating high or low tone on the platform of each character, or by a dash if the tone is rising.

Remember! Memorisation comes with constant practice and reading so don't worry if you don't recognize all the characters right away. You will very soon.

~Igbo Rocks... Go forth and speak it~

Signing My Art in Ndebe

Calling All Scripters!!!!!

If you expressed interest in Scripting for the Ndebe Project, then roll up. The first scripting task is here. Check it out in the video below.

To submit your writing samples, please join The Igbo Academy Facebook Group and upload your scans/photos to the group album with the tag "scripting 1".

We look forward to your submissions.

=D

New Discussion on Facebook

There's a new discussion about word tones on the Facebook Group.

The objective is to get the most correct commonly agreed upon word tones so that spelling can be made easier and faster.

If you'd like to participate or even just have a look, click the link below.

Tone

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.

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/

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

Why Ndebe?

The old Igbo alphabet has 36 letters while the Igbo alphabet under the Ndebe system has 52 letters.

This is because unlike the Roman alphabet which was never designed for Igbo anyway, the Ndebe alphabet has been specifically designed for the Igbo language and accounts for vowel tones which the Roman alphabet does not.

Because this new Igbo alphabet assigns a different letter to each vowel tone, comprehension is exponentially increased when reading. Many Igbo speakers and writers often forget to indicate vowel tones when writing Igbo as they are not used to doing this with English (which is written with the same roman alphabet). This creates confusion as a single word in Igbo can have numerous meanings depending on its tone. If the author of the text that you are trying to read is not readily available, you may be stuck wondering whether the 'akwa' you see means bed, cloth, tears, or bridge.

The Ndebe system does away with this problem entirely and strictly limits the use of tone marks to the very few consonants that occasionally need them.

Also, because the Ndebe writing system is strikingly different from the roman system, it puts the user in a completely different mindset when reading or writing. A mindset that is purely Igbo.

The Read Me

Hello everyone, this is the preliminary post before I start putting up the proper material from the Igbo Academy and the Ndebe Project.

I hope everyone will enjoy using this blog to learn and I want everyone to understand that language is a group process. Language is all about communication so the aim of this blog is for Igbo speakers to FINALLY be able to communicate EFFECTIVELY through the Igbo language by introducing some much needed structure to our existing language.

I hope that everyone that uses this site will try to use some of the lessons learned here in their everyday speech, and I believe that if we all resolve to apply the same rules to our Igbo then we will eventually be able to communicate effectively.

The whole point of language is to help you put the picture in your head in another persons head so they can see the same picture you see. Until now Igbo hasn't been able to do that very well because a lot of the Igbo language is far too vague. (e.g. the use of mmili in the following ways - Mili - water, mili - lake, mili - stream, and they all have the same tone. It won't work)

Maybe our ancestors were able to communicate with Igbo as it is now because they didn't have the things we have now and they didn't venture very far from their own land anyway, but today we need NEW, UNIQUE DESCRIPTORS and simply trying to spread the meaning of the same word over too many things just won't work. (e.g. Akwukwo = leaf, book, school, education } a.k.a. perfect recipe for confusion)

In plain English. We are going to make up words. Yes, we will make up new words wherever there are none. We shall not resort to the tomfoolery of borrowing words from English (e.g. Bisa = Visa } Hausa language or Ofisa = Officer} Igbo language) We will do this according to the rules of Igbo grammar, and all our words shall be IGBO.

All languages are made up of words that individual members of the group made up in their heads and taught to the others and as such any words we come up with here should be regarded as authentic Igbo words. And please don't argue that some other people might not use the same word: God knows we need synonyms in Igbo.

Another important thing that you should know as a user or reader of this blog is that all lessons and examples will be in Anambra Igbo.

This is because:

• There is unity in diversity. (It is important for Igbo speakers to become familiar with other Igbo dialects so learning Igbo in Anambra Igbo will help you become familiar with another dialect)

If you're not clear on anything please leave questions in the comments section. Ask and you shall receive.

Please do not claim the Igbo Academy or the Ndebe Project is not orthodox, authentically Igbo or anything else. I am Igbo, this is Igbo, therefore everything here is 100% Igbo. Your Igbo is not always my Igbo but if you're Igbo then you already know that.

Sweet, let's get to work.