Ikwerre, sometimes spelt as Ikwere, is a type of Igboid language spoken primarily by the

Ikwerre people The Ikwerre (natively known as ''Iwhuruọha'') are one of the Igbo subgroups in Rivers State. They are the biggest Igbo group along with the Ngwa. Traditional history has classified Ikwerre into seven groups called "Ikwerre Essa". They are ...

, who inhabit certain areas of

Rivers State Rivers State, also known as Rivers, is a state in the Niger Delta region of southern Nigeria (Old Eastern Region). Formed in 1967, when it was split from the former Eastern Region, Rivers State borders include: Imo to the north, Abia and Akwa ...

Nigeria Nigeria ( ), , ig, Naìjíríyà, yo, Nàìjíríà, pcm, Naijá , ff, Naajeeriya, kcg, Naijeriya officially the Federal Republic of Nigeria, is a country in West Africa. It is situated between the Sahel to the north and the Gulf o ...

. It is the biggest Igboid variety along with Ngwa of

Abia State Abia State ( ig, Ȯha Abia) is a state in the South-East geopolitical zone of Nigeria, it is bordered to the north and northeast by the states of Enugu, and Ebonyi, Imo State to the west, Cross River State to the east, Akwa Ibom State to th ...

Classification

The Ikwerre language is classified as an Igboid language. Based on

lexicostatistical Lexicostatistics is a method of comparative linguistics that involves comparing the percentage of lexical cognates between languages to determine their relationship. Lexicostatistics is related to the comparative method but does not reconstruct a ...

analysis, Kay Williamson first asserted that the Ikwerre,

Ekpeye Ekpeye people also known as Ekpeye Kingdom (An Igbo sub group) claim to have fled Bini to settle in Rivers State, Niger Delta, Nigeria. However, they speak an igboid language and dialect have no similarity to the aforementioned claim of migrati ...

, Ogba, Etche and Igbo languages belonged to the same language cluster, and were not dialects. However after subsequent studies and more research by both Williamson and

Roger Blench Roger Marsh Blench (born August 1, 1953) is a British linguist, ethnomusicologist and development anthropologist. He has an M.A. and a Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge and is based in Cambridge, England. He researches, publishes, and w ...

, it was concluded that Igbo, Ikwerre, Ogba and their sister languages apart from Ekpeye form a "

language cluster A dialect continuum or dialect chain is a series of language varieties spoken across some geographical area such that neighboring varieties are mutually intelligible, but the differences accumulate over distance so that widely separated vari ...

" and that they are somewhat

mutually intelligible In linguistics, mutual intelligibility is a relationship between languages or dialects in which speakers of different but related varieties can readily understand each other without prior familiarity or special effort. It is sometimes used as a ...

. There are indications that the Ikwerre society was

bilingual Multilingualism is the use of more than one language, either by an individual speaker or by a group of speakers. It is believed that multilingual speakers outnumber monolingual speakers in the world's population. More than half of all ...

even in the pre-colonial Nigeria, with people speaking Igbo dialects, as well as the Ikwerre language.

Phonology

Vowels

Ikwerre distinguishes vowels by quality (frontedness and height), the presence or absence of

nasalization In phonetics, nasalization (or nasalisation) is the production of a sound while the velum is lowered, so that some air escapes through the nose during the production of the sound by the mouth. An archetypal nasal sound is . In the Internation ...

, and the presence or absence of

advanced tongue root In phonetics, advanced tongue root (ATR) and retracted tongue root (RTR) are contrasting states of the root of the tongue during the pronunciation of vowels in some languages, especially in Western and Eastern Africa, but also in Kazakh and M ...

. There is also a vowel * which is posited to explain syllabic nasal consonants in accounts of the language which state that Ikwerre has no nasal stops. This sound is realized as or a

syllabic Syllabic may refer to: *Syllable, a unit of speech sound, considered the building block of words **Syllabic consonant, a consonant that forms the nucleus of a syllable *Syllabary, writing system using symbols for syllables *Abugida, writing system ...

nasal which is

homorganic In phonetics, a homorganic consonant (from ''homo-'' "same" and ''organ'' "(speech) organ") is a consonant sound that is articulated in the same place of articulation as another. For example, , and are homorganic consonants of one another sinc ...

to the following consonant.

Vowel harmony

Ikwerre exhibits two kinds of

vowel harmony In phonology, vowel harmony is an assimilatory process in which the vowels of a given domain – typically a phonological word – have to be members of the same natural class (thus "in harmony"). Vowel harmony is typically long distance, me ...

: #Every vowel in an Ikwerre word, with a few exceptions, agrees with the other vowels in the word as to the presence or absence of

. #Vowels of the same height in adjacent syllables must all be either front or back, i.e. the pairs & , & , & , and & cannot occur in adjacent syllables. Vowels of different heights, however, need not match for frontness/backness either. This doesn't apply to the first vowel in nouns beginning with a vowel or with , and doesn't apply to

onomatopoeic Onomatopoeia is the process of creating a word that phonetically imitates, resembles, or suggests the sound that it describes. Such a word itself is also called an onomatopoeia. Common onomatopoeias include animal noises such as ''oink'', ''m ...

words.

Consonants

The oral consonants occur before oral vowels, and their nasal allophones before nasal vowels. The "non-explosive stops" are not

plosive In phonetics, a plosive, also known as an occlusive or simply a stop, is a pulmonic consonant in which the vocal tract is blocked so that all airflow ceases. The occlusion may be made with the tongue tip or blade (, ), tongue body (, ), lip ...

s (not pulmonic), and are equivalent to

implosive Implosive consonants are a group of stop consonants (and possibly also some affricates) with a mixed glottalic ingressive and pulmonic egressive airstream mechanism.''Phonetics for communication disorders.'' Martin J. Ball and Nicole Müller. Ro ...

s in other varieties of Igbo. The tap may sometimes be realized as an approximant .

Tone

Ikwerre is a

tonal language Tone is the use of pitch in language to distinguish lexical or grammatical meaning – that is, to distinguish or to inflect words. All verbal languages use pitch to express emotional and other paralinguistic information and to convey emph ...

with seven tones: high, mid, low, high-low falling, high-mid falling, mid-low falling and rising. Ikwerre also has a tonal downdrift. For example: rínyā̀ (high, mid-low falling) means "weight, heaviness", rìnyâ (low,high-low falling) means "female, wife", mụ̌ (rising) means "to learn", mụ̂ (high-low falling) means "to give birth", etc.

Agbirigba

Ikwerre has an in-group variant, or

cant Cant, CANT, canting, or canted may refer to: Language * Cant (language), a secret language * Beurla Reagaird, a language of the Scottish Highland Travellers * Scottish Cant, a language of the Scottish Lowland Travellers * Shelta or the Cant, a la ...

, Agbirigba, that is meant to prevent understanding by outsiders.

References

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Ikwerre Language Igboid languages Languages of Nigeria Indigenous languages of Rivers State