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Igbo (English: / ˈ iː b oʊ / EE-boh, [5] US also / ˈ ɪ ɡ b oʊ / IG-boh; [6] [7] Standard Igbo: Ásụ̀sụ́ Ìgbò [ásʊ̀sʊ̀ ìɡ͡bò] ⓘ) is the principal native language cluster of the Igbo people, an ethnicity in the Southeastern part of Nigeria. Igbo Languages are spoken by a total of 31 million people. [1]
"Igbo" as a unitary identity for all Igbo speaking people developed comparatively recently, in the context of decolonisation and the Nigerian Civil War. The various Igbo-speaking communities were historically decentralised; [ 31 ] in the opinion of Nigerian novelist Chinua Achebe , Igbo identity should be placed somewhere between a "tribe" and ...
[citation needed] Within Niger–Congo, the Bantu languages alone account for 350 million people (2015), or half the total Niger–Congo speaking population. The most widely spoken Niger–Congo languages by number of native speakers are Yoruba, Igbo, Fula, Lingala, Ewe, Fon, Ga-Dangme, Shona, Sesotho, Xhosa, Zulu, Akan, and Mooré.
Language Cluster Dialects Alternate spellings Own name for language Endonym(s) Other names (location-based) Other names for language Exonym(s) Speakers Location(s)
Among these are the most important languages of southern Nigeria, Benin, Togo, and southeast Ghana: Yoruba, Igbo, Bini, and Gbe. These languages have variously been placed within the Kwa or Benue–Congo families or, starting in the 1970s, combined with them altogether. Williamson & Blench (2000) separate the languages here called Volta-Niger ...
Nigerian novelist: How I was banned from speaking Igbo. In contrast, speakers of Yoruba, the other main language in southern Nigeria, have declined from 15,000 to 10,000 over the same period.
[citation needed] About 10 percent speak Swahili, [citation needed] the lingua franca of Southeast Africa; about 5 percent speak a Berber dialect; [citation needed] and about 5 percent speak Hausa, which serves as a lingua franca in much of the Sahel. Other large West African languages are Yoruba, Igbo, Akan and Fula.
There are over 520 native languages spoken in Nigeria. [1] [2] [3] The official language is English, [4] [5] which was the language of Colonial Nigeria.The English-based creole Nigerian Pidgin – first used by the British and African slavers to facilitate the Atlantic slave trade in the late 17th century [6] – is the most common lingua franca, spoken by over 60 million people.