Ikwere

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Ikwerre ( ìkʷéré )

Spoken in

Nigeria
speaker 200,000
Linguistic
classification

Niger-Congo

Language codes
ISO 639-3

ikw

Ikwere or Ikwerre is a language that is primarily spoken by the Ikwere people in the Nigerian state of Rivers .

In 1973, according to various reports, the number of Ikwere-speakers was estimated at around 200,000. In view of the population development in the four Local Government Areas in which Ikwere is spoken ( Port Harcourt , Emohua , Obio-Akpor and Ikwerre ), this number can currently (2006) be estimated at just over one million speakers.

Dialects of the Ikwere are Ndele, Ọgbakiri, Ọbịọ, Alụụ, Ịbaa and Elele; the language is a tonal language and is written in the Latin alphabet .

The assignment of the Ikwere to a language group or the classification of the language as a dialect of the Igbo language remains a widely controversial topic in the Ikwere community and in that of the Igbo people; Most linguists classify Ikwere as a separate language within the group of igboid languages .

Since the Igbo language, which is by far the more speaker-rich, has a certain dominance in the region, Ikwere, unlike the only official language English, has no official status. Most Ikwere speak English as a second language. Igbo was widely used as a second language even before British colonial rule.

literature

  • George N. Clements, Sylvester Osu: Nasal harmony in Ikwere, a language with no phonemic nasal consonants . In: Journal of African Languages ​​and Linguistics . tape 26 , 2005, pp. 165–200 , doi : 10.1515 / jall.2005.26.2.165 .
  • Kay Williamson: Reading and writing Ikwerre . Institute of African Studies, Ibadan 1970.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b M. Paul Lewis: Ikwere - A language of Nigeria . In: SIL International (Ed.): Ethnologue: Languages ​​of the World . 16th edition. Dallas, Texas 2009.
  2. ↑ as per the 2006 National Population Commission census. NDDC MD / CEO: Who shall we send? June 22, 2009. Retrieved September 17, 2010 .
  3. ^ Rivers State: Population by Local Government Area and Sex. (No longer available online.) National Population Commission of Nigeria, 2006, formerly original ; Retrieved September 17, 2010 .  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.population.gov.ng  
  4. ↑ Ebiegberi Joe Alagoa, FN Anozie, Nwanna Nzewunwa: The early history of the Niger Delta . Buske Verlag, 1988, ISBN 3-87118-848-4 , p. 81 .
  5. ↑ Kay Williamson, Roger M. Blench: African languages: an introduction . Cambridge University Press, 2000.
  6. ↑ Kay Williamson: ODUMA: The Lower Niger Languages . vol. 1. Rivers State Council of Arts & Culture, Port Harcourt 1973.
  7. ↑ a b Kelechukwu U. Ihemere: A Tri-Generational Study of Language Choice & Shift in Port Harcourt . Universal-Publishers, 2007, ISBN 978-1-58112-958-8 , pp. 28-35 .