Igbo Speech and Language Development
Categories: English Language Learners - Evaluation and Therapy
Igbo is the principal language of the Igbo people living in southeastern Nigeria. There are approximately 24 million speakers of Igbo. It is written in the Latin script, which was introduced by British colonialists, and there are over 20 Igbo dialects.
Igbo Facts
- Some of the largest populations of Igbo speakers in the U.S. reside in Virginia, Missouri, California, and New Jersey.
- Cities with large Igbo populations include New York, Philadelphia, Newark, Los Angeles, Boston, Miami, Chicago, and Houston.
- Igbo is the fourth most spoken language in Africa.
- Igbo is spoken by approximately 20 million people in Nigeria.
The Sound Systems of Igbo and English
If you’ve read our book, Difference or Disorder: Understanding Speech and Language Development in Children from Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Backgrounds, then you 
Assume we are testing a child from an Igbo background who is learning English as a second language.
If errors occur on the sounds that are unique to English, that is indicative of language influence.
If errors occur on the sounds unique to Igbo or the sounds shared between Igbo and English, that is indicative of a speech impairment.
It’s more complex than that, obviously, but that’s a good place to start. Then we need to think about the order of acquisition of the sounds in development, and of course the phonotactic constraints. For more information on all of that, check out the Difference or Disorder book.
Igbo Speech and Language Development
Igbo and English Consonant Phonemes
Igbo and English Vowel Phonemes
Phonological Patterns in Igbo
| Patterns of Native Language Influence: | Example/description of possible errors: |
|---|---|
| Allowable syllable patterns in Igbo are vowel (V), consonant-vowel (CV), and syllabic nasal (N) | Syllables might be reduced in multisyllabic words |
| Aside from the syllabic nasal, consonants cannot occur at the end of words | Final consonants might be omitted |
| There are no consonant clusters | Consonant clusters might be reduced or a neutral vowel might be added between consonants (e.g. pay for play or puhlay for play) |
| Substitution of [θ] with [s], [t], [f] | thin – sin, tin, fin |
| There are only four vowel sounds (a, i, u, o) | Other vowels might be substituted with [a, i, o, u] |
(Anyanwu, 1998)
CONTRASTIVE ANALYSIS FOR LANGUAGE: Igbo and English
| Feature | Igbo | English | Examples of Errors |
|---|---|---|---|
| Word Order | Usually subject-verb-object | Usually subject-verb object | None expected |
| Pronouns | Igbo does not distinguish between subject and object pronouns (e.g. he vs. him) but person (first, second, and third singular and plural subjects) is distinguished. Pronouns can also be marked for possession. |
Subject pronouns: he/she/they/we Object pronouns: him/her/them/us |
She mom is here.*/ Her mom is here. Them go to school.*/They go to school. |
| Articles | No articles | Has definite (the) and indefinite (a, an) articles | I have cat.*/I have a cat. |
| Adjectives | Adjective can precede or follow the noun. There are few adjectives in Igbo. Instead verb suffixes are used to describe actions. | Adjective precedes noun | I want the cat brown.*/ I want the brown cat. |
| Plurality | Marked with a prefix /otutu/ so cup /iko/ becomes /otutuiko/ | Add an /s/ to the noun | Plurals might not be marked at aIl or might be marked incorrectly. I want two sandwich.*/I want two sandwiches. |
| Verb conjugations | Verbs do differentiate between present and past. Instead, suffixes are added to the verb to describe the tense and quality of the verb. Examples include: tara/-tere: action in the past (he did); -la/-le: completed action (he has done); -ri: past completed action (he did); -go: already completed the action (have done); -lu: to indicate an intensification of the action of the verb | Verb conjugates to demonstrate tense changes (I eat, I ate) |
Igbo suffixes might be used to mark tense or intensity. (e.g. walklu to express intense walking) |
| Prepositions | There is one preposition (na) in Igbo, which has to be understood by context | Many different prepositions | Incorrect use of prepositions |
Note: Sentences marked with an asterisk (*) are not grammatical.
Thank you for all the great feedback for all the languages you are requesting information on! We have published posts or are working on: Albanian, Amharic, Cambodian, Cantonese, Flemish / Dutch, Filipino/Tagalog, Hmong, Igbo, Karen, Kinyarwanda (ever heard of that one?), Portuguese, Romanian, Somali, Thai, Turkish, and Urdu/Hindi. For those not familiar with our current book, we’ve already compared and contrasted English with Spanish, Vietnamese, Hebrew, Korean, German, Czech, Japanese, Farsi, Mandarin, French, Russian, Arabic, and the African-American English dialect.
If there are other languages you would like to see, please let us know with your comments below!
If you are looking for speech therapy in Austin, Texas for a child who speaks Igbo, contact our Austin speech therapy clinic.
Greek and Mandarin
Hi Helen, We have a chapter on Mandarin in the Difference or Disorder book. I don’t have any resources on Greek yet but it is on the list now!
Urdu!
Hi April, Urdu is on my list and I have a few resources I can share with you. Best, Ellen
I have your first volume of this resource. When do you plan to publish Volume II??
We are working on it but do not yet know what the publication date will be. We will update our blog community as we get closer. Best, Ellen
I hope it is very, very soon! 🙂
Thank you! We’re moving as fast as we can. In the meantime, we’ll have a new language highlighted once a month in our blog.
Hello Ellen,
I see that approximates such as “l”, “w” and “r” are not listed in the venn diagram and was wondering if they occur in Igbo.
Thank you for all of the amazing information!
/l/ and /w/ exist in Igbo. The r of Igbo is a post-Alveolar flap, unlike the English r.
Just to ensure I am understanding correctly… the /r/ and vocalic /r/ do not exist in Igbo, correct? When treating articulation in a child who is highly influenced by Igbo spoken in the home, we would not consider incorrect production of /r/ and vocalic /r/ an error, since these phonemes do not exist in Igbo. Is this correct?
Are /sh/ and /ch/ present in Igbo?
Yes, both /ch/ and /sh/ exist in Igbo.
Do /m/, /n/ and /ng/ exist in Igbo?
Yes, all three of those sounds exist in Igbo too.
Just to ensure I am understanding correctly… the /r/ and vocalic /r/ do not exist in Igbo, correct? When treating articulation in a child who is highly influenced by Igbo spoken in the home, we would not consider incorrect production of /r/ and vocalic /r/ an error, since these phonemes do not exist in Igbo. Is this correct?
That’s correct!
Hey there! I just evaled a kid who immigrated from Nigeria about a year ago. His parents speak Yoruba. Do you have any forthcoming information on Yoruba and/or Nigerian English?
Hi Molly,
No specific information about Yoruba but here is a paper: https://ufdc.ufl.edu/AA00025766/00001/6j
Yoruba shares many similarities with Igbo and we do have information on that: https://bilinguistics.com/igbo-speech-and-language-development/
Hi there!
Just to clarify:
In one article I read where the /l/ phoneme occurs in Igbo but is a dental sound instead of our voiced alveolar production.
Would you say that this is true?
So, would a student whose first language is Igbo qualify for speech therapy if they cannot produce the /l/ in the initial position in words?
Also, I read where there are not consonant clusters in Igbo? Correct?
Hi Susan,
The /l/ is a tough call because when we look at their phonemes (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Igbo_language) on wikipedia they show an /l/ in Central Igbo but no /l/ in Standard Igbo (?!). So it think it is best to always lean back on intelligibility. If you have high intelligibility and that is the only sound, that really isn’t ground for “academic need.” If they have other things to focus on, go that route and try to teach the /l/. The BEST way to figure this out is call mom or dad and say “Do you have words with /l/ in them in Igbo? Can you give me an example of a word that starts with /l/?
From what we can find, they do not use consonant clusters at all or at any great level so it wouldn’t be a good goal: Consonant clusters might be reduced or a neutral vowel might be added between consonants (e.g. pay for play or puhlay for play)
This is great information about articulation, phonological and syntactic differences in children with families who speak Igbo. Do you have any information on pragmatic language differences?
Hi Elizabeth,
This is really tough! With pragmatic discourse there is not a lot of information but sometimes you can kick it upstairs and rather than talking about Igbo pragmatics research pragmatic differences Nigeria, and if there is still no information go up one more step and look for African language pragmatic difference. We couldn’t find much but here is a cool, possibly related paper on Bantu: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Igbo_language to give you a sense of what might be different. The best way in these situations is to talk to the parents or a same culture representative (YMCA/mosque/cultural center/restaurant/etc) and say “hey, we are seeing this, does this make sense to you?” It is great if the student has siblings because we can talk to the parents and say: “Hey, we are seeing this, how would his older sister respond in that situation.”
I would love to see this for Swahili. We have a large Swahili population at my school and I would love to see this information. Thank you!
Thank you so much for sharing your resources! I teach English as a second language pronunciation courses and one of my high-level students is Igbo-speaking.
Thanks, Alyssa. So glad you find our resources helpful.
Best, Ellen