Ibibio language

Ibibio is the native language of the Ibibio people of Nigeria, belonging to the Ibibio-Efik dialect cluster of the Cross River languages. The name Ibibio is sometimes used for the entire dialect cluster. In pre-colonial times, it was written with Nsibidi ideograms, similar to Igbo, Efik, Anaang, and Ejagham. Ibibio has also had influences on Afro-American diasporic languages such as AAVE words like buckra which come from the Ibibio word mbakara and in the Afro-Cuban tradition of abakua.

Geographic distribution
The Ibibio people are found in the South-South region of Nigeria in Akwa Ibom State, Cross River State, and Eastern Abia State (Arochukwu and Ukwa East LGAs). Ibibio communities in Opobo Nkoro and Oyigbo LGA's of Rivers State are largely unknown.

Some Ibibios are also found in other neighboring countries (western Cameroon, Bioko — central Guinea, and Ghana).

Consonants

 * are bilabial, whereas is labiodental.
 * has two allophones, which occur in complementary distribution: voiceless and voiced.
 * are alveolar, whereas is dental.
 * Stem-initial is realized as.

Intervocalic plosives are lenited:
 * → or
 * → or
 * → or

Vowels



 * are phonetically near-close.
 * are phonetically true-mid; is also strongly centralized:.
 * are phonetically near-open; is central rather than front:.

Between consonants, have allophones that are transcribed, respectively. At least in case of, the realization is probably somewhat different (e.g. close-mid ), because the default IPA values of the symbols are very similar to the normal realizations of the Ibibio vowels. Similarly, may actually be near-close, rather than close.

In some dialects (e.g. Ibiono), occur as phonemes distinct from.

Tones
Ibibio has five tones: high, mid, rising, falling and low. A word can mean two or more different things based on the tone ascribed to it.