devour129:
e missiri m gi

That is Engiligbo.

kennethalice:
please my follow Nairaland Igbo member ,please how do you say in Igbo .... I miss you

It does not have a literal translation, neverthless there are other ways you can still say it, other ways that connotes the same meaning. Like: Ahu m na acho ihu gi. etc

O ma se o.

The problem is that we have a government promoting and rewarding the use of English instead of our own languages. I'm afraid it is becoming increasingly difficult to change the modern trend if English isn't removed as the official language. It's unavoidable that languages will die, but we need to make sure English isn't the language stealing the speakers.

It's painful to see young children with poor command of English and barely any knowledge of their mother's or father's language. They are basically gimped without the ability to express themselves properly.

How about DSTV giving us a channel solely dedicated to Igbo program in Igbo language. Just as we have for Yoruba and Hausa.
They have no excuse now because several movies/programs are been churned out in Igbo language. Just type igbo films on you-tube and be amazed on the rich collection out there.

In June 2014 just before the world cup, DSTV said they are already finalizing on bring the Igbo-Channel on board. We have not heard anything since then.
DSTV it is time to deliver on your promise make our yearning for Igbo-Channel come true. That is the only that i enjoy on DSTV aside sports.

The existing platform created by DSTV is also a tool to help our language to survive.

Nkem bu nkem, nke anyi bu nke anyi.
Nke onye adi njo.
Egbe bere, ugo bere.
A na m asuru onye igbo obula m huru asusu igbo. Biko ka onye obula suba igbo.

ohereiyi:
How about DSTV giving us a channel solely dedicated to Igbo program in Igbo language. Just as we have for Yoruba and Hausa.
They have no excuse now because several movies/programs are been churned out in Igbo language. Just type igbo films on you-tube and be amazed on the rich collection out there.

In June 2014 just before the world cup, DSTV said they are already finalizing on bring the Igbo-Channel on board. We have not heard anything since then.
DSTV it is time to deliver on your promise make our yearning for Igbo-Channel come true. That is the only that i enjoy on DSTV aside sports.

The existing platform created by DSTV is also a tool to help our language to survive.

Nkem bu nkem, nke anyi bu nke anyi.
Nke onye adi njo.
Egbe bere, ugo bere.
A na m asuru onye igbo obula m huru asusu igbo. Biko ka onye obula suba igbo.

Dalu ri nne, Chineke gozie gi maka omalicha edemede gia. Igbo ga adi.

Hello sir. I am a Lagos born boy trying to learn Igbo. I read novels and translate using a dictionary to expand my vocabulary. However I am finding it difficult because most Igbo novels dont have tone marking making it difficult for me to differentiate words spelt the same way and also to learn to pronounce without a twacher (I had the same problem reading out parts of your post that I didnt already know the meaning of ) Can you please help me by taking some Igbo novels, putting tone marks on the words, and posting them up here? The dictionary i have is veey good and contains tones but this is still not always preferable when I dont even know which "akwa" the novel was talking about. Better still, I will like if you can open it web page for this. It'll be a great help to me and many others like me who are trying to learn and looking for someway to expand vocabulary.

MunachisoS:
Hello sir. I am a Lagos born boy trying to learn Igbo. I read novels and translate using a dictionary to expand my vocabulary. However I am finding it difficult because most Igbo novels dont have tone marking making it difficult for me to differentiate words spelt the same way and also to learn to pronounce without a twacher (I had the same problem reading out parts of your post that I didnt already know the meaning of ) Can you please help me by taking some Igbo novels, putting tone marks on the words, and posting them up here? The dictionary i have is veey good and contains tones but this is still not always preferable when I dont even know which "akwa" the novel was talking about. Better still, I will like if you can open it web page for this. It'll be a great help to me and many others like me who are trying to learn and looking for someway to expand vocabulary.

Keep it up with your efforts. How well do you speak it currently? I'd recommend that you begin by watching Igbo language movies. You will pick up on Igbo words, pronunciation, and vocabulary faster. In less than no time, you will be able to detect quickly which 'akwa' the author is referring to in Igbo novels!

Jisie ike. Akwa Chinedu na-akwa n'enu akwa nke eji edozi akwa nna ya erikazi!

Tell me if you're able to translate what I just wrote!

Dear Nairaland members:

I'm a BBC journalist in London and I'm about to make a documentary about the Igbo language -- how it has declined but is now becoming more valued once again. I would be very interested to hear from anyone who might want to take part in this documentary.

I am especially interested in hearing from people who have personal experience of how the Igbo language has been neglected -- for example anyone who has tried to use / learn Igbo but encountered difficulties. I can be contacted at michael.gallagher@bbc.co.uk

Thank you.

BBCjournalist:
Dear Nairaland members:

I'm a BBC journalist in London and I'm about to make a documentary about the Igbo language -- how it has declined but is now becoming more valued once again. I would be very interested to hear from anyone who might want to take part in this documentary.

I am especially interested in hearing from people who have personal experience of how the Igbo language has been neglected -- for example anyone who has tried to use / learn Igbo but encountered difficulties. I can be contacted at michael.gallagher@bbc.co.uk

Thank you.

Why don't you open a new thread for this? I'm sure you'll get more responses than on here.

BBCjournalist:
Dear Nairaland members:

I'm a BBC journalist in London and I'm about to make a documentary about the Igbo language -- how it has declined but is now becoming more valued once again. I would be very interested to hear from anyone who might want to take part in this documentary.

I am especially interested in hearing from people who have personal experience of how the Igbo language has been neglected -- for example anyone who has tried to use / learn Igbo but encountered difficulties. I can be contacted at michael.gallagher@bbc.co.uk

Thank you.

Hey Michael, first I would say that this is an interesting field to be investigating into. The Igbo language is a rich and dynamic language spoken by at least 30 million people in the south east and south south zones of Nigeria. It has well so many dialects, at least 700 dialects of a recent count, and some dialects could be intelligible to each other and some unintelligible. The Igbo people are a dynamic, enterprising, hardworking and intelligent bunch of people who are very open to change. Since the colonization of Nigeria by the British, they have been very westernized in their ways on the outside but are still quite traditional on the inside. In the quest for westernization and modernism, many have achieved fluent mastery of the English language such that a great many are fluently bilingual in both Igbo and English language. However, a certain percentage of Igbo people have placed more emphasis on the English language as first and Igbo language as second, especially when raising their children. Just as it is with other tribes of Nigeria such as Bini/Edo, Yoruba, Ibibio etc., it is not hard to find Igbo families raising their children in English language first and Igbo language later as they grow up, just for the reason that they want their children to have good mastery of the English language as they can always learn the Igbo language later. Many Nigerian parents believe that learning native languages first hamper the child's ability to speak fluent English language and seek to have their children learn English first before Igbp. This has proven to be wrong as most of these English-speaking parents as adults were raised by their own parents solely in Igbo language, Yoruba, Bini, Ibibio etc. and learned English from school as they obtained western education and their speaking Igbo first before English did not hamper their ability to learn English later from their teachers, in school etc. So why then has this trend continued? Some say it is a fashionable or 'exotic' thing to have their kids speaking English language, differentiating children of some middle and upper class families from those from low class who are mostly native-speaking. This same trend has been observed in french-speaking African countries where parents in those countries raise their children first in French before their native languages. Needless to say, I have seen many bilingual homes where the children speak both Igbo and English fluently - they are raised in Igbo at home and learn English at school. From a recent experiment I had read sometime ago, it was proven that children are capable of learning up to 8 different languages at the same time. A child raised in a very multilingual family was able to speak as many as 8 different languages at the same time. However, certain African parents choose to raise their children to be solely monolingual in either English or French as kids when they are capable of learning several languages at the same time.

The 'decline' of the Igbo language has been attributed mainly to this aspect where certain parents raise their kids in English language first and Igbo language later, because the survival of a language is mainly dependent on the transference of the language from the older generation to the younger generation, and children are expected to pick the language, and they grow up to be adults to transfer the language to the next generation. But then majority of these English-speaking Igbo kids later grow up to speak Igbo as adults, mainly due to acculturation from home and societal acculturation, and the Igbo traditional society that expects adults to speak the language. Thus, it is quite rare to find Igbo adults who aren't Igbo speaking, the exceptions being mostly those born and raised outside Nigeria especially in the US, UK etc. For many of these kids, Igbo language sort of becomes a second language to them, not 'native' as they did not speak it as children but nevertheless they speak it fluently as well. I, myself, am an example. I spoke English as a child as my parents raised my siblings and I in English but as we grew up my mother stopped speaking English entirely and switched to Igbo language. As an adult, I speak both Igbo and English fluently. As a child and teenager growing up in Igboland, I had to face constant jeering from my Igbo-speaking classmates for not being able to speak Igbo - an experience most of we minority English-speaking Igbo kids have to go through, that push us to learn Igbo 'by force'. The experience of constantly being left out in conversations with your friends or not being able to flow in conversations with friends was also there, since majority of children and teenagers in Igboland are still Igbo-speaking, leaving us to seek out other English-speaking ones to make friends with. Sadly enough, majority of these Igbo-speaking kids and teenagers also spoke fluent English just like us (having learned it from school) and were able to relate to both worlds of Igbo and English languages while the English-speaking ones were restricted to mostly the world of English language. These bilingual kids also had the benefit of blending perfectly in school and also while going to the village (mostly Igbo-speaking) and blending in perfectly with everyone in the village (cousins, relatives, grandparents who are mostly monolingual etc.) and the English-speaking kids in such settings would be left out or left to form cliques of their own.

In the early 2000s, there started to be many calls to reverse what seems to be an increasing trend in the number of English-speaking Igbo children (about 15% to 25% of Igbo kids) and the concerns for the 'decline' in the Igbo language was mainly due to this. In a few schools, children were punished for speaking Igbo language and speaking only English language was encouraged. However, I would like to add here that the cries over the 'death of Igbo language' were exaggerated, with some doomsday 'prophets' who barely know the stages or processes of language death 'prophesying' death periods for the language, with some saying that the Igbo language would die in little as 20 years from then or by 2020s. I happened to be a little concerned about this and decided to do some research about this and found out that the calls were over-emphasized and the language is very much alive.

The exaggeration of the status of the Igbo language and the death of Igbo language as well beyond the actual status of the language has still stuck around since then, such that an outsider totally new to the world of the Igbos would think of the situation as very critical. However, a trip by an outsider across the entire Igboland (stretching across SE and SS zones) reveals that the language is still very much alive. It still remains the first language spoken at home by most in Igboland, is spoken everywhere on the streets, in the market place, in the banks, in schools and universities, used on TV, studied as a major in the university etc. It has been discovered that the concerns and calls for Igbo language 'death' was borne out a study that focused on the English-speaking children of the upper class and some middle-class Igbo families living outside Igboland or abroad, children who are a minority compared to the majority of other Igbo children in Igboland or in Nigeria who are Igbo-speaking or bilingual.

Nevertheless, the Igbo language has not actually 'declined' in the sense of a considerable reduction in the number of speakers or its usage however the calls to reverse the trend noticed among children of certain middle class and upper class families has spread the consciousness among all Igbo families to ensure that their children are bilingual in both languages.

Despite all, the Igbo language still remains very much alive and as a first-language to at least 30 million Igbos out of about 32 million Igbos home and abroad (my own rough estimate).

BBCjournalist:
Dear Nairaland members:

I'm a BBC journalist in London and I'm about to make a documentary about the Igbo language -- how it has declined but is now becoming more valued once again. I would be very interested to hear from anyone who might want to take part in this documentary.

I am especially interested in hearing from people who have personal experience of how the Igbo language has been neglected -- for example anyone who has tried to use / learn Igbo but encountered difficulties. I can be contacted at michael.gallagher@bbc.co.uk

Thank you.

the best you can do to get more information is to open a new thread on this
my opinion:. " igbo language is not dying but it is strongly evolving. Most Igbos deal with businesses that involves traveling/interactions with outsiders, hence their desire to learn english which is the linguia fraca of the nation nigeria.
In recent times if you cannot speak the language as an igbo adult within igbo dominated society you are likely to be subjected to a form of discrimination, you maynot be taken seriously in some certain events/situations no matter the amount you have or you status in the society. This have been a hinderance to adaptation of people who live elsewhere especially other parts of nigeria and cann't speak the language..."
Needless to say that most importantly you cannot hold any genuine title or post in igboland (including politically).

superstar1:


Don't turn this tribal, you know if you want to, I will gladly oblige you.

Yes I quite agree that Yorubas have English names but they hardly bare them as first names. Your grandparents will never even reckon with your English name, no matter how sweet it sounds and no matter how sophisticated they are. Infact, they will take it to the next level by calling you by your unique "oroki" name, which is a special name that is peculiar for eulogising you as a person.

Religion and westernisation or arabicanisation should never make us to lose our identity and be proud of heritage. If you like bear Roseleen or Cassandra or Maureen, and be speaking with English with your nose, you will never be seen as a proper English man, as long as you are black.

Likewise, you can recite the quran in Arabic even in your dreams, it will never make Arabs not to see you as their subjects.

Just be proud of your identity and rep it to blazes.

Which one is worst...First names or surnames.

A lot of Yoruba bear foreign surnames and that is despicable...This you won't find in Igbo land. We can bear first name which is Christian but we can't bear surnames like Tiwa Savage or Bankole Wellington or Idowu Martin's

The little Igbo my GF thought me vanished in the face of this 'real Igbo'.

The only thing I can manage to decipher is 'Umuaka'= Children of elites
Obodo Lagos= In the city of Lagos.

So I guess you talked about the children of elites in Lagos.

hijodedios:
nwanne m nwoke,udo diri gi maka edemede a idere ebea,obi di m uto n'ihi na oka nwere ndi o na amasi ka asusu Igbo ghara ibu ihe nara n'iyi kama ka ndi Igbo kulite na ura na ebe mgbasa ozi Igbo di.O bu ihe nwute ma burukwa nnukwu ihe ihere na otutu umuaka Igbo enweghi ike isu asusu Igbo ma ghara itinye asusu oyibo na ime ya,nke kasi njo bu na ndi nne na nna anyi oge ugbua anaghi akpo ya mpka ikuziri umuaka ha asusu Igbo,okachasi ndi nke amuru na obodo lagos.Ndumaodu m na enye ndi nne na nna tata bu ka anyi jidesie ike na agba mbo na nkuzi na nkwado asusu Igbo na ebe umuaka anyi no.Ka chineke gozie ndi Igbo nile na ebe obula ha no.

(it will take a real Igbo man/woman to read and understand me because my laptop didn't have the functions to punctuate my write up adequately)

hahaha,with time you will be able to learn and speak it as well as i do now if not better,cheers.

oyatz:
The little Igbo my GF thought me vanished in the face of this 'real Igbo'.

The only thing I can manage to decipher is 'Umuaka'= Children of elites
Obodo Lagos= In the city of Lagos.

So I guess you talked about the children of elites in Lagos.

[quote author=MbaanabaraAgu post=31212887][/quote]

Eziokwu.
Mana, anyi kwesiri suoo ya.

tonychristopher:


Which one is worst...First names or surnames.

A lot of Yoruba bear foreign surnames and that is despicable...This you won't find in Igbo land. We can bear first name which is Christian but we can't bear surnames like Tiwa Savage or Bankole Wellington or Idowu Martin's

And you think such doesn't happen in the east also?

Shegzy8:


And you think such doesn't happen in the east also?

It's starting to get popular in the east.