The Igbo Alphabet

Today, Igbo has no alphabets of its own. It is written like English (because Nigeria is an English speaking country), with 36 Latin alphabets made up of 8 vowels (nine in some dialects), 19 consonants and 9 blends. The order of Igbo alphabet is set as follows:

Capital letters (Ndị Nnukwu)

A      B       CH      D       E        F

G      GB     GH     GW     H       I

Ị       J         K        KP     KW     L

M    N       NW    NY     Ṅ       O

Ọ      P       R        S        SH      T

U      Ụ       V        W       Y        Z

Vowel, a sound made by the aid of the vocal cords, but without any audible friction made by the tongue, teeth, lips or palate.

Consonant, is to make a sound in speech produced by a stoppage or partial stoppage of the breath; a speech sound that is not a vowel.

From experiences, the best and easiest way to learn the alphabets are to memorize or cram it in the following groups of given characters:

Small letters (Ndị Obere)

a      b       gb     d       e        f

g      gh     h       i         ị         j

k      l         m      n       ṅ       o

ọ      p       kp     r        s        sh

t      u       ụ       v        w       y

z      ch   gw       kw     nw    ny

As you can see, the above group (Anambra way) is indeed much easier to cram and memorize than the former. Why this particular order? No body really knows. In fact, it is one the good example of well-known indicative characteristics of Igbos.

NOTE: Even though gb comes before d. people talk in Igbo of abd as they talk of abc in English, i.e. the simplest form of anything, the beginning, the start.

Igbo people have a peculiar way of doing their things. They have no one-way of doing anything under the earth because their world is a Dualities rather than Absolutes.

For example, while it may be convenient to count from 1,2,3, to 10 sequentially, they believe that it is sometimes desirable or even preferable to do so in a disjointed fashion, as evidenced by the two groups of alphabets.

How does it sound when the native Igbo speakers pronounced those characters?

The sounds and letters in Igbo, are as in English, do not always correspond. That is, there are more consistent spelling patterns in Igbo than in English.

In other words, Igbo words are almost always written the way they are pronounced.