Ìgbò is the second in alphabetic order of the three major languages of Nigeria. It is the dominant language in Nigeria‟s South-East
geopolitical region. Nigeria‟s South-South geo-political zone equally has a large population to whom Ìgbò is a first or second language. Ìgbò is the dominant language in the Eastern part of the Nigeria. Ìgbò is spoken by about 20 million who are primarily of Ìgbò descent. Migration took Ìgbò people to the Cameroon and Equatorial Guinea, while the 1967- 970 Nigerian Civil War took Ìgbò to the Republic of Gabon. The Slave Trade took them to the Caribbean (Wikipedia, the free encyclopaedia, p. 2 ).
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Genetically, Ìgbò, like Yorùbá, is Kwa and like all Kwa languages, Ìgbò and Yorùbá share the striking feature of the presence of the
double articulated labial-velar stops, [kp gb] (Williamson 1969 and Pulleyblank 1991). Although there are several dialects of Ìgbò
distinguished by variant accents and orthography, the dialects are
in most cases mutually intelligible. A standard literary Ìgbò language based on Central Igbo spanning Òwèrrì and Úmuahìà dialect was developed in 1972. From the moment it was proposed in 1939 by Dr Ida Ward, the Central Ìgbò has gained very wide acceptance, especially, in its use for scholarly work (Oraka, 1983). The Ọnwụ Orthography, for example, was based on Central Igbo. Kay Williamson‟s contribution to Twelve Nigerian Languages (Dunstan, 1969) was based on Central Igbo. Central Igbo has, however, faced a
lot of challenges. For example, viewing Central Igbo as imperialistic, the Society for Promoting Ìgbò Language and Culture
set up a parallel Ìgbò orthography harmonization committee which
sought to cross pollinate Central Igbo with words from other dialects outside the Central Ìgbò and to accommodate loan words:
The major problem confronting Ìgbò Orthography is the inability to harmonize and standardize the very wide range of spoken Ìgbò dialects. The Ọnwụ Orthography agreed to in 1962 was a compromise between the Missionary Lepsius Orthography in use for over 70 years before the colonialists introduced the Africa orthography in 1929 and the newer one advocated by the International Institute of African Languages and Cultures (Wikipedia, the free encyclopaedia, p. 2 ).
Ìgbò-speaking people had a traditional coding or writing system known as the Nsibidi Ideograms. Nsibidi Ideograms was developed for writing by the Ekoi people long before the 1550s. It died out
naturally as a writing system. The Ekpe cult group revived it by adopting it as a secret code among its members. Two factors distinguish the various dialects of Ìgbò and they are accents and orthography. Ìgbò orthography varies according to the dialect.
According to Williamson (1969, p. 85):
For many years the development of Ìgbò as a written language was hampered by a dispute between advocates of two different orthographies. This was essentially a disagreement over how to represent the 7 vowels of Ìgb . The „old‟ orthography used the five Roman alphabet symbols plus one sub-dotted ọ and thereby left two vowels (i and the dotted subscript ụ) unrepresented.
In keeping with the tradition of harmonising the alphabet, the Ọnwụ Orthography attempted to harmonise Ìgbò alphabet by using eight
symbols to accommodate the two variants of /ε/ (ç). The Ọnwụ Orthography was criticised for using three difficult phonetic symbols: [ε] for e, []] for ö, and [θ] for ụ. In addition, the use of the Ọnwụ Orthography was felt to distort the structure of the language (Williamson 1969, p. 85).
Of the three major languages of Nigeria, perhaps, Ìgbò has the most controversial orthography because of the emergence of competing
orthographies. This caused confusion for over three decades during which the Ìgbò language suffered:
5).
To stem the tide of confusion, the government of the then Eastern Nigeria introduced the Ọnwụ Orthography as the official orthography to be used in Eastern Nigeria. Hardly had the dust settled on the Ọnwụ Orthography than new challenges started. As observed by Àyándòkun, Ayçni, Bellò, Bõlárìnwá, Èjeagbà, Gíwá, Hassan, Ibíyçyè
and Ìdòwú (2009, p. 5):
Beginning from 1968, many individuals and groups now write Ìgbò with different orthographies - new symbols, tonal notations, and spelling rules all of which differ from the official orthography could not take off, competing orthographies have posed difficulty and embarrassment to the ministries of education in the Ìgbò speaking states and such Ìgbò stake- holders as “authors and publishers, researchers, electronic and print media organisations and practitioners, teachers, schools and learners, examination bodies, and non- governmental agencies.
Like other major languages, Ìgbò has orthography, a curriculum description and it is taught from the primary grades to the NCE and the University levels in Nigeria. The implication of all these is that the teacher of Ìgbò should (i) stick to the most acceptable
orthography, (ii) make students conversant of the other orthographical variations (iii) conversant with the Ìgbò language
curriculum
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