Ikwerre, also spelt as Ikwere, is a language

Language

Language may refer either to the specifically human capacity for acquiring and using complex systems of communication, or to a specific instance of such a system of complex communication...

 spoken primarily by the Ikwerre people who inhabit Rivers State

Rivers State

Rivers State is one of the 36 states of Nigeria. Its capital is Port Harcourt. It is bounded on the South by the Atlantic Ocean, to the North by Imo, Abia and Anambra States, to the East by Akwa Ibom State and to the West by Bayelsa and Delta states...

, Nigeria

Nigeria

Nigeria , officially the Federal Republic of Nigeria, is a federal constitutional republic comprising 36 states and its Federal Capital Territory, Abuja. The country is located in West Africa and shares land borders with the Republic of Benin in the west, Chad and Cameroon in the east, and Niger in...

. According to a 1973 SIL International report, the number of Ikwerre speakers is estimated at 200,000. By taking into consideration the population of the four Ikwerre local governments (Port Harcourt, Emohua

Emohua

Emuoha is a Local Government Area in Rivers State, Nigeria. Its headquarters are in the town of Emuoha.It has an area of 831 km² and a population of 201,901 at the 2006 census.The postal code of the area is 511....

, Obia/Akpor

Obio-Akpor

Obio/Akpor is a Local Government Area in the metropolis of Port Harcourt, one of the major centres of economic activities in Nigeria, and one of the major cities of the Niger Delta, located in Rivers State. The Local Government Area covers 260 sq.km and at the 2006 Census held a population of...

 and Ikwerre

Ikwerre, Rivers State

Ikwerre is a Local Government Area in Rivers State, Nigeria. Its headquarters are in the town of Isiokpo.The postal code of the area is 511....

), this figure may extend to a little over a million speakers as per the 2006 National Population Commission census.

Classification

The classification of Ikwerre as an Igbo dialect remains a subject of controversy among a minority in the Ikwerre community, although most publications classify it as an Igboid language.

Based on lexicostatistical analysis, Kay Williamson

Kay Williamson

Kay Williamson , born Ruth Margaret Williamson was a linguist who specialised in the study of African languages, particularly those of the Niger Delta in Nigeria, where she lived for nearly fifty years. Her many publications include a grammar and dictionary of the Ijo language, a dictionary of Igbo...

 originally asserted that the Ikwerre, Ekpeye

Ekpeye

Ekpeye is an ethnicity and people found in the niger delta region of southern nigeria n Ekpeye is an ethnicity and people found in the niger delta region of southern nigeria n Ekpeye is an ethnicity and people found in the...

, Ogba

Ogba language

Ogba is a language of the Ogba people of Nigeria. It is an Igboid language....

, Etche and Igbo

Igbo language

Igbo , or Igbo proper, is a native language of the Igbo people, an ethnic group primarily located in southeastern Nigeria. There are approximately 20 million speakers that are mostly in Nigeria and are primarily of Igbo descent. Igbo is a national language of Nigeria. It is written in the Latin...

 languages belonged to the same language cluster or related languages, but maintained that they are not dialects of each other. Subsequent studies by both Williamson and Roger Blench

Roger Blench

Roger Blench is a British linguist, ethnomusicologist and development anthropologist. He has an M.A. and a Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge and remains based in Cambridge, England...

 concluded that the Igbo, Ikwerre, Ogba and other sister languages, except Ekpeye, form a "language cluster" and that they are somewhat intelligible among them. If there was an original Ikwerre language separate from Igbo, then that language has been lost and replaced by a language that is sister to Igbo with no evidence of it ever existing. Taking the dominance of the Igbo language into consideration, the linguistic affinity between the two languages and the high frequency of bilingualism among the Ikwerre community, researcher Kelechukwu Ihemere supports the classification of Ikwerre as an Igboid language, and that there are indications that the Ikwerre society was bilingual even in the pre-colonial Nigeria, with people speaking other Igbo dialects and Ikwerre. He carefully adds, however, that if the relationship between Ikwerre and Igbo is solely due to contact, further studies into a proto-Ikwerre language would be necessary. No such language has been proven to exist.

Vowels

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

Nasalization

In phonetics, nasalization 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...

, and the presence or absence of advanced tongue root

Advanced tongue root

In phonetics, advanced tongue root and retracted tongue root, abbreviated ATR or RTR, are contrasting states of the root of the tongue during the pronunciation of vowels in some languages, especially in West Africa, but also in Kazakh and Mongolian...

.

Front Front vowel A front vowel is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a front vowel is that the tongue is positioned as far in front as possible in the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant. Front vowels are sometimes also...	Back Back vowel A back vowel is a type of vowel sound used in spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a back vowel is that the tongue is positioned as far back as possible in the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant. Back vowels are sometimes also called dark...
High	+ATR Advanced tongue root In phonetics, advanced tongue root and retracted tongue root, abbreviated ATR or RTR, are contrasting states of the root of the tongue during the pronunciation of vowels in some languages, especially in West Africa, but also in Kazakh and Mongolian...	i ĩ	u ũ
	−ATR	ɪ ɪ̃	ʊ ʊ̃
Mid Mid vowel A mid vowel is a vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a mid vowel is that the tongue is positioned mid-way between an open vowel and a close vowel...	+ATR Advanced tongue root In phonetics, advanced tongue root and retracted tongue root, abbreviated ATR or RTR, are contrasting states of the root of the tongue during the pronunciation of vowels in some languages, especially in West Africa, but also in Kazakh and Mongolian...	e ẽ	o õ
	−ATR	ɛ ɛ̃	ɔ ɔ̃
Low	−ATR	a ã

There is also a vowel /ə̃/, which may be realized as [ɨ̃] or a syllabic

Syllabic consonant

A syllabic consonant is a consonant which either forms a syllable on its own, or is the nucleus of a syllable. The diacritic for this in the International Phonetic Alphabet is the under-stroke, ⟨⟩...

 nasal whose articulation is determined by adjacent consonants.

Vowel harmony

Ikwerre exhibits two kinds of vowel harmony

Vowel harmony

Vowel harmony is a type of long-distance assimilatory phonological process involving vowels that occurs in some languages. In languages with vowel harmony, there are constraints on which vowels may be found near each other....

:

1. 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 advanced tongue root
   Advanced tongue root
   In phonetics, advanced tongue root and retracted tongue root, abbreviated ATR or RTR, are contrasting states of the root of the tongue during the pronunciation of vowels in some languages, especially in West Africa, but also in Kazakh and Mongolian...
   
   .
2. Vowels of the same height in adjacent syllables must all be either front or back, i.e. the pairs /i/ & /u/, /ɪ/ & /ʊ/, /e/ & /o/, and /ɛ/ & /ɔ/ 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 /ɾ/, and doesn't apply to onomatopoeic words.

Consonants

Bilabial Bilabial consonant In phonetics, a bilabial consonant is a consonant articulated with both lips. The bilabial consonants identified by the International Phonetic Alphabet are:...	Labiodental Labiodental consonant In phonetics, labiodentals are consonants articulated with the lower lip and the upper teeth.-Labiodental consonant in IPA:The labiodental consonants identified by the International Phonetic Alphabet are:...	Alveolar Alveolar consonant Alveolar consonants are articulated with the tongue against or close to the superior alveolar ridge, which is called that because it contains the alveoli of the superior teeth...	Postalveolar Postalveolar consonant Postalveolar consonants are consonants articulated with the tongue near or touching the back of the alveolar ridge, further back in the mouth than the alveolar consonants, which are at the ridge itself, but not as far back as the hard palate... or palatal Palatal consonant Palatal consonants are consonants articulated with the body of the tongue raised against the hard palate...	Velar Velar consonant Velars are consonants articulated with the back part of the tongue against the soft palate, the back part of the roof of the mouth, known also as the velum)....		Glottal Glottal consonant Glottal consonants, also called laryngeal consonants, are consonants articulated with the glottis. Many phoneticians consider them, or at least the so-called fricative, to be transitional states of the glottis without a point of articulation as other consonants have; in fact, some do not consider...
				Unrounded	Rounded	Unrounded	Rounded
Explosive stop Stop consonant In phonetics, a plosive, also known as an occlusive or an oral stop, is a stop consonant in which the vocal tract is blocked so that all airflow ceases. The occlusion may be done with the tongue , lips , and &... or affricate Affricate consonant Affricates are consonants that begin as stops but release as a fricative rather than directly into the following vowel.- Samples :...	Voiceless	p		t	tʃ	k	kʷ
	Voiced	b		d	dʒ	ɡ	ɡʷ
Fricative Fricative consonant Fricatives are consonants produced by forcing air through a narrow channel made by placing two articulators close together. These may be the lower lip against the upper teeth, in the case of ; the back of the tongue against the soft palate, in the case of German , the final consonant of Bach; or...	Voiceless		f	s				h	hʷ
	Voiced		v	z
Nonexplosive stop Nonexplosive stop In phonetics and phonology, nonexplosive stops are stop consonants that lack the pressure build-up and burst release normally associated with stops...	Voiced	ḅ
	Glottalized Glottalization Glottalization is the complete or partial closure of the glottis during the articulation of another sound. Glottalization of vowels and other sonorants is most often realized as creaky voice...	ʼḅ
Lateral Lateral consonant A lateral is an el-like consonant, in which airstream proceeds along the sides of the tongue, but is blocked by the tongue from going through the middle of the mouth....				l
Tap				ɾ
Approximant					j	ɰ	w

The tap /ɾ/ may sometimes be realized as an approximant [ɹ].

/ḅ ʼḅ l ɾ j ɰ w h hʷ/ are realized as [m ʼm n ɾ̃ ȷ̃ ɰ̃ w̃ h̃ h̃ʷ], respectively, preceding a nasal vowel.

External links

• Ethnologue report for language code:ikw