Select languages...
Igbo linguistic data
Select languages above to compare their features side by side
Common questions about Igbo
What linguistic data does this Igbo page show?
Word order, tone system, gender count, case marking, adposition direction, syllable structure, consonant inventory traits (implosives, double-articulations), vowel system (with vowel harmony), morphological alignment, script, register stratification, speaker count, and geographic area. Each row is one feature with Igbo's value visible; you can add other languages to read the same feature side by side.
Where do the Igbo data points come from?
Typological features are merged from URIEL+ (Mortensen et al.) and a curated set authored against descriptive grammars. Speaker counts come from Ethnologue and Glottolog. Geographic area is computed from the Asher 2007 world language atlas. Similarity scores combine genetic distance, typological overlap, and lexical-borrowing data.
How does Igbo tone work?
Igbo has two phonemic tones (high, low) plus downstep — a phonological process that lowers a high tone after another high. Tone distinguishes lexical pairs and grammatical contrasts. Standard Igbo orthography marks tones with diacritics, but informal writing often drops them; readers infer from context.
What are Igbo verbal extensions?
Igbo verbs can stack derivational suffixes that modify aspect, manner, direction, or argument structure. A verb like kwu 'speak' can extend with -ru (perfective), -ta (move toward speaker), -ghachi (return), and so on, generating productive complex meanings from simple roots. Some descriptions count dozens of extension suffixes.
Why does Igbo cluster with Yoruba on similarity scores?
Both are Volta-Niger languages of southwestern/southeastern Nigeria, sharing SVO order, tonal phonology, and the verbal-extension/serial-verb pattern. Genetic ancestry pulls them apart at the sub-branch level, but contact and typology converge them. The factor breakdown chip on the row tells you which dimensions contributed most.
Sources for Igbo
The grammatical descriptions on this page are informed by the following published reference and descriptive grammars. Grammatical facts themselves are not subject to copyright; the scholars who documented them deserve attribution.
- Emenanjo, Nolue. 2015. A Grammar of Contemporary Igbo: Constituents, Features and Processes. M & J Grand Orbit Communications. (Standard Igbo reference; cited by chapter for tones (Ch. 4), morphology (Ch. 5), extensional suffixes (Ch. 8), pronouns (Ch. 11), TAM (Ch. 19), negation (Ch. 19, pp. 460–469), relativization (Ch. 17, pp. 405–410).)
- Williamson, Kay & Roger Blench (eds.). 2013. Dictionary of Ọ̀nìchà Igbo (2nd edition draft).
- Green, M. M. & G. E. Igwe. 1963. A Descriptive Grammar of Igbo. Akademie-Verlag / OUP.
- Welmers, William E. & Beatrice F. Welmers. 1968. Igbo: A Learner's Manual. UCLA / Peace Corps.