I love Igbo/Ibo people. They’ve unusual sense of humor and they’re wonderful people. When it comes to business, religion, etc., Igbo/Ibo people are always serious.

This ethnic group is a great blessing to Nigeria.

However… Something confuses me. I often hear IGBO and IBO, and wonder what their exact meanings are.

Does “Igbo” mean their language or the people?

Does “Ibo” mean their language or the people?

Which one stands for language? Which one stands for people?

Or do “Igbo” and “Ibo” mean the same?

Sadly, most young generations of the Eastern tribe don’t understand their dialects deeply anymore. But there are still experts of the culture and language of the Ibo/Igbo on this earth.

Could they please, help shed light on this issue and clear the ambiguity?

Many thanks.

Neteller here: www..com.ng

G makes d different

AjalaJ:
I love Igbo/Ibo people. They’ve unusual sense of humor and they’re wonderful people. When it comes to business, religion, etc., Igbo/Ibo people are always serious.

This ethnic group is a great blessing to Nigeria.

However… Something confuses me. I often hear IGBO and IBO, and wonder what their exact meanings are.

Does “Igbo” mean their language or the people?

Does “Ibo” mean their language or the people?

Which one stands for language? Which one stands for people?

Or do “Igbo” and “Ibo” mean the same?

Sadly, most young generations of the Eastern tribe don’t understand their dialects deeply anymore. But there are still experts of the culture and language of the Ibo/Igbo on this earth.

Could they please, help shed light on this issue and clear the ambiguity?

Many thanks.

Neteller here: www..com.ng

To the best of my knowledge, IGBO is the language of the IBOS that is IBO is the tribe while IGBO is the language.

One is a Tribe..
We smoke the other one.

Wrong answers. The simple truth is difference in orthography. If you do not know what orthography is, kindly do a simple Google search. Both "Igbo" and "Ibo" are the same. The difference results from writing standards at two different points in time.

"Ibo" was written with orthography that did not recognize the "gb" sound. In other words, whites did not know the difference between "b" and "gb", hence why you see "Ibo" in older text.

"Igbo" was written with orthography that recognizes the "gb" sound. This newer orthography was developed by linguists who could tell the difference between "b" and "gb", hence why we see "Igbo" in more recent text.

Beyond that, the two are the exact same thing.

ChinenyeN:
Wrong answers. The simple truth is difference in orthography. If you do not know what orthography is, kindly do a simple Google search. Both "Igbo" and "Ibo" are the same. The difference results from writing standards at two different points in time.

"Ibo" was written with orthography that did not recognize the "gb" sound. In other words, whites did not know the difference between "b" and "gb", hence why you see "Ibo" in older text.

"Igbo" was written with orthography that recognizes the "gb" sound. This newer orthography was developed by linguists who could tell the difference between "b" and "gb", hence why we see "Igbo" in more recent text.

Beyond that, the two are the exact same thing.

Is there one gb sound. I think not. Certainly across southern Nigeria the gb sound is found in many languages. When referring to Igbo/Ibo peoples it certainly sounds different from when referring to stuff people smoke to get high e.g


I do not think that either Ibo or Igbo does justice to the actual word and I would even argue that it is not a gb sound at all it is something unlike anything else and many "igbo" people do not say it right

After Achebe learnt that the oiginal owners of Ife were the Ugbos, he tried unsuccessfully to edit Things Fall Apart and replace Ibo with Igbo. The term caught on but history of Ife remained authentically Yoruba.

omonnakoda:
I do not think that either Ibo or Igbo does justice to the actual word and I would even argue that it is not a gb sound at all it is something unlike anything else and many "igbo" people do not say it right

I was with you up until you made the bolded comment. The boded comment makes me wonder how familiar you are with "Igbo" language. I certainly agree with your first statement that there isn't a single "gb" sound. In truth, the "gb" sound is pronounced differently from one region to the next within West Africa. This is also applicable to the Igbo. Anyone who studies the differences between Igbo dialects will begin to realize that "gb" is pronounced differently in different parts of Igboland.

Even to use the letters "g" and "b" does not do the sound justice, whether it be within Igbo or Yoruba, or Ewe, etc. The letters "g" and "b" only serve to approximate the sound as well as show that the sound is implosive, by linguistic definition.

There does not exist a single, unified pronunciation for "gb" throughout West Africa nor throughout Igboland. So, your statement that "Igbo" people do not say it right cannot be validated.

ChinenyeN:


I was with you up until you made the bolded comment. The boded comment makes me wonder how familiar you are with "Igbo" language. I certainly agree with your first statement that there isn't a single "gb" sound. In truth, the "gb" sound is pronounced differently from one region to the next within West Africa. This is also applicable to the Igbo. Anyone who studies the differences between Igbo dialects will begin to realize that "gb" is pronounced differently in different parts of Igboland.

Even to use the letters "g" and "b" does not do the sound justice, whether it be within Igbo or Yoruba, or Ewe, etc. The letters "g" and "b" only serve to approximate the sound as well as show that the sound is implosive, by linguistic definition.

There does not exist a single, unified pronunciation for "gb" throughout West Africa nor throughout Igboland. So, your statement that "Igbo" people do not say it right cannot be validated.

I think we agree a lot more than you think though my comment does not require particular expertise but rather exposure to the Igbo language and other languages that use gb. Being aware of just one language is actually limiting technically gb is not a sound but an alphabet that attempts to represent sounds.There are several different sounds that are quite close but distinct
Igbo is rendered very differently in Yoruba to refer to bush,forest weed etc in comparison to Igbo referring to The language or people. They are ,to my mind, completely different sounds and Yorubas cannot ,in most cases,pronounce the latter the way I have been "schooled" by my Igbo friends. Another example is Drogba which is often anglicized to Drug-bah

Okay, we are mostly saying the same thing then. It was just your choice of wording that threw things off for me.

Igbo is the language and tribe. Ibo is anglicised.