Igbo

Igbo is the native language of the Igbo people and part of the Niger-Congo language family. Igbo first evolved in the ninth century AD near the Niger and Benue rivers and spread across the south-eastern region of Nigeria, where it is still spoken today. Igbo is recognised as an official language in Nigeria, as well as an official minority language in the Equatorial Guinea and Cameroon. Igbo has influenced various Caribbean languages including Jamaican Patois and is spoken in a creolised form in Cuba.
Historically, Igbo was written using Nsibidi ideograms, though this was not a full writing system. In 1850 the Lepsius Standard Alphabet was used as the first Igbo orthography and later replaced by the African Orthography in 1929. In the 1960s this was replaced by the Ọnwụ orthography, but a variety of issues have made a standardised Igbo orthography difficult, including the representation of tone and depicting sounds specific to certain dialects. Modified versions of Ọnwụ have been produced to address some of these issues though they have not been widely adopted. Meanwhile, other movements wish to restore a modernised Nsibidi writing system.
Igbo has more than 20 dialects including Waawa, Ngwa, Olu, Ika, Edda, Enuani, Ohuhu, Ekpeye, Oyigbo, Owerre, Etche, Ikwerre and Anioma. Occasionally closely related Igboid languages including Ika and Ogba are also considered dialects of Igbo, however this is debatable.
The large quantity of Igbo dialects has made it difficult to create a standardised form of Igbo for speaking and writing. Central Igbo was suggested as the literary form of Igbo in 1939 and is based on the Owerri and Umuahia dialects, but this was not universally accepted. Since the 1970’s attempts have been since to adopt loan words from other dialects of Igbo into Central Igbo, to create a more inclusive form of standardised Igbo.