Re: 'Igbo'

Arthaey Angosii said:
>> At school today, I met a Nigerian who informed me the pronunciation of
>> the
>> name of his native language Igbo is [ibu], to my surprise. I thot it's
>> [igb)o]... Or is this just a dialectal variation?
>
> A Nigerian professor of sociology here also says there is no [g] --
> though I get this info second-hand from friends who've taken his
> class. They remember the prof pronouncing it as [ibo].

'Ibo' is a variant name for the Nigerian language Igbo. There may be
dialects in which the labiovelar stops have been simplified, or it may
simply be that your friends have difficulty hearing the velar part of the
sound. Also, the Nigerian professor might prefer hearing [ibo] instead of
[igbo] for [igb)u] -- maybe [igbo] or [igbu] means something unflattering
in Igbo -- and therefore tells people there's no [g] (which, of course,
there isn't, phonetically).


-- Mark