Igbo Alphabet

Standard Igbo is written in the Ọnwụ alphabet, named after the committee led by Dr S. E. Ọnwụ that settled it in the early 1960s. It has 36 letters in this order: A B CH D E F G GB GH GW H I Ị J K KP KW L M N Ṅ NW NY O Ọ P R S SH T U Ụ V W Y Z. Nine of them are double letters (digraphs) that count as one letter and one sound, so in a dictionary words starting with gb come after all the words starting with plain g.

Written out character by character, the Igbo alphabet uses 28 different letters: the English ones except q and x, plus the four dotted ones. C appears only inside ch. Each dotted letter comes straight after its plain partner: ị after i, ṅ after n, ọ after o and ụ after u.

The digraphs are spelled with ordinary letters: ch as in church (Chukwu, God), sh as in shoe, ny as in canyon and nw, a w said through the nose (nwa, child; nwanyị, woman). Gb and kp are single sounds made with the lips and the back of the tongue at once (ugbo, farm; akpụ, cassava), gh is a soft throaty g (agha, war), and gw and kw are g and k with rounded lips (Gwa m, tell me).

What Ị, Ọ, Ụ and Ṅ do

Igbo has eight vowels, a e i ị o ọ u ụ, and the dot below marks the more open, relaxed member of each pair: ị is close to the vowel of English bit, ọ to the vowel of British law, ụ to the vowel of book, while plain i, o and u are tenser, as in machine, go and food. The dot changes the word, so it is part of the spelling: ụlọ is house, ọkụ fire, ụmụ children, and ị on its own means you.

The vowels also follow vowel harmony: a simple Igbo word tends to take its vowels either from the set a ị ọ ụ or from the set e i o u, not from both. That is why ụlọ and ọkụ keep their dots together, and why a misplaced dot looks wrong to an Igbo reader at once.

Ṅ ṅ, n with a dot above, is the ng sound of English sing, but in Igbo it can start a word: ṅụ means to drink. It is a different letter from ñ, the Spanish n with a tilde, and from plain n.

Igbo tone marks and accents: à á and the macron

Igbo is a tonal language: the pitch of each syllable is part of the word. The textbook example is akwa, which is àkwà bed, àkwá egg, ákwà cloth and ákwá crying, depending on the tones. When tone is written, a grave accent ` marks low tone, an acute ´ (or no mark at all) marks high tone, and a macron ¯ marks a downstep, a high tone said a little lower than the one before.

Everyday Igbo writing, from newspapers to WhatsApp, usually leaves tone marks out and lets context decide. Dictionaries, school books, language courses and careful spellings of names such as Ìgbò use them. Syllabic m and n, the first sound of nne (mother) and mmiri (water), carry tone too, so ǹ, ń and ḿ are here as well.

Precomposed letters exist for à á è é ì í ò ó ù ú, ǹ ń and ḿ, but not for the dotted vowels with a tone or for m with a grave. Type those as the base letter followed by a combining mark: ọ + ̀ gives ọ̀, ụ + ́ gives ụ́. Their appearance depends on the font and rendering software.

How to type Igbo letters on a phone, in Word and on a Mac

On Android, Google's Gboard includes an Igbo keyboard; add it in the keyboard settings and the dotted letters are within reach. On iPhone and other phones you can install an Igbo keyboard app, or copy the letters from the grid above.

In Microsoft Word, type the code and press Alt+X straight after it: U+1ECB gives ị, U+1ECA Ị, U+1ECD ọ, U+1ECC Ọ, U+1EE5 ụ, U+1EE4 Ụ, U+1E45 ṅ, U+1E44 Ṅ and U+20A6 the naira sign ₦. Keep the U+ in front, otherwise Word may read the letter before it as part of the code. For tones, type the letter and then U+0300 (low), U+0301 (high) or U+0304 (downstep), Alt+X. Windows also ships an Igbo keyboard layout you can add under language settings, and free layouts are available through Keyman.

On a Mac, switch to the Unicode Hex Input layout and hold Option while typing the four-digit code (1ECB for ị). In HTML, write ị for ị, ọ for ọ, ụ for ụ, ṅ for ṅ and ₦ for ₦.

Where Igbo is spoken

Igbo is the language of south-eastern Nigeria. Unicode's CLDR estimates about 31 million speakers; it is the main language of Abia, Anambra, Ebonyi, Enugu and Imo states and is also spoken in parts of Delta and Rivers, as well as in Igbo communities in Lagos, Abuja and abroad. Standard Igbo, Igbo Izugbe, is used in schools, books and broadcasting alongside many regional dialects.

Igbo belongs to the Volta–Niger branch of the Niger–Congo family. Nigeria's other big languages have their own collections: Yoruba, which also uses dotted letters (ẹ ọ ṣ) and tone marks, Hausa, Efik, Ibibio, Tiv and Nigerian Pidgin. For the flag, the naira and the country's emoji, see Nigeria.