Izi language

Izi (Izii, Izzi) is an Igboid language spoken in Ebonyi state in Nigeria.

[2] It forms a dialect cluster with the closely related languages Ikwo, Ezza, and Mgbo.

Belonging to a larger group of people called the Igbo, the Izi distinguish themselves from their neighbors and have divided themselves into many clans.

Research on the origins of the Igbo is limited, but a leading hypothesis is that many different communities immigrated in waves from the West and North to the borders of the central area of Igboland.

From that central area, migration in the more recent past has occurred in all directions, which has led to a homogeneous Igbo culture.

The Portuguese arrived in Igboland in the mid-15th century, and from 1434 to 1807, contact points between European and African traders were established along the Nigerian coast.

In 1854, A German philologist named Karl Richard Lepsius made a “Standard Alphabet”, meant for all the languages of the world.

In 1882, Britain enacted an educational ordinance to direct the teaching of reading and writing only in English which temporarily inhibited the development of Igbo along with other languages of West Africa.

The pamphlet used some symbols from the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), which began a controversy with the missionary society who had used Lepsius's writing for almost 70 years.

In 1929, the Colonial Government Board of Education tried to replace Lepsius with the IIALC’s orthography.

[2] However, comparisons with the Central Igbo language showed only an 80% consistency in lexical items.

Both voiced and voiceless stops occur in labial, alveolar, velar, and labio-velar places of articulation.

Below is a table of the vowels divided by their places of articulation in the oral cavity as well as the position of the root of the tongue:

[2] The labialization feature is phonetically realized by the semivowel /w/ between a consonant margin and a vowel nucleus, as in /ákwɔ̀/ 'razor'.

Thus, the five possible combinations are V, CV, VN, CVN, N (V is a vowel, C a consonant, and N, a syllabic nasal.

Rules for the operation of the tonal variations are as follows: Tone can often change meaning.