Igbo

About Igbo

Igbo is spoken by about 27 million people as a first language, mainly in southeastern Nigeria. It is one of the three largest languages of Nigeria, together with Hausa and Yoruba.

Igbo is a tonal language: the pitch of a syllable, high or low, can change the meaning of a word. Tone marks are written in dictionaries and textbooks but usually left out in everyday writing. The dotted letters ị, ọ and ụ are separate vowels from i, o and u. A common greeting is Ndewo (hello), and Kedu? asks how someone is.

FamilyNiger-Congo, Igboid
Native speakersabout 27 million (2019)
Where spokenNigeria
ScriptLatin alphabet with dotted vowels
Toneshigh and low
Codesig (ISO 639-1), ibo (ISO 639-3)

Speaker number: Ethnologue (2019), via Wikidata. Retrieved 26 September 2026.

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