A short history of Igbo dictionaries — The Igbo Language

Igbo has been written down for well over a century. Echeruo lists his predecessors: Schön (1852); Crowther and Schön (1882–83); Ganot (1904); N. W. Thomas (1913); Archdeacon Dennis and colleagues (1923); Armstrong’s Comparative Wordlist of Five Igbo Dialects (1967); Welmers and Welmers (1968); Williamson (1972); and two dictionaries by Igbo authors, F. C. Ogbalu’s Okowa Okwu (1962) and H. I. Nnaji’s Modern English-Igbo Dictionary (1985). He honours Ogbalu as “the motive force” of the revival of written Igbo while criticizing the habit of mixing real Igbo words with coined equivalents of English words (for instance bakiteria for bacteria).

Echeruo’s own Igbo-English Dictionary (preface dated 1997, printed by Longman Nigeria in 2001) is, in his words, “a modest first step” towards a comprehensive reference work. It gathers attested words from several dialects, with dialect labels, tone, numbered senses, etymological notes and examples drawn from texts: the Bible, novels such as Flora Nwapa’s Efuru, Achebe’s fiction and the epic poetry of Ohafia and Bende. It is not a learner’s dictionary and its English-Igbo part is “strictly an index”.

The dictionary also records how Igbo absorbed words from neighbours: egusi and orisa from Yoruba, osikapa “rice” from Hausa, ekpe from Efik, ehi “personal god” compared with Edo, Maazi (a title) from French Monsieur, and bekee “white person”, which Echeruo links to the English explorer Dr William Baikie. The “inkhorn terms” appendix lists coinages for modern vocabulary, such as mahadum “university”, which Echeruo regards sceptically as not yet part of the general lexicon.

For learners, Obia (2020) is a thematic word list in eighteen chapters, from measurement and weather to hospital and emergency, with many words adapted from English (kalenda, tebulu) or descriptive phrases. It has no example sentences outside the greetings chapter and no dialect labels, and some entries are doubtful, so it should be checked against a dictionary. Okorochukwu’s grammar primer, from the same year, is a short course of rules and model sentences. Used together, the three books cover a scholar’s dictionary, a learner’s word list and a beginner’s grammar.

“A dictionary is always work-in-progress.”
Michael J. C. Echeruo, Igbo-English Dictionary, introduction

1 How many letters does the standard Igbo alphabet have?

The three books consulted all count 36 letters: 8 vowels and 28 consonant letters, including nine digraphs.

2 Which word means “egg” when the tone pattern is Low-High?

In Echeruo’s dictionary akwa means “tear or funeral lament” (High-High), “cloth” (High-Low), “egg” (Low-High) and “bridge” (Low-Low).

3 What are the two major dialect zones in Echeruo’s dictionary?

Echeruo groups the dialects into an Owerri zone and an Onitsha zone, with mutual intelligibility reduced but not lost across them.

4 What does the verb daa add to the greeting Daalụ?

Echeruo explains that daa means “keep doing”; Daalụ encourages someone at work and also means thanks.

Sources for this article

Echeruo 2001, introduction; appendices; bibliography
Obia 2020, structure and approach
Okorochukwu 2020, whole booklet

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