Ikwerre (Iwhuruohna), is an Iwhuruohna dialect spoken primarily by the Ikwerre people, who inhabit certain areas of Rivers State, Nigeria.

Classification

The Ikwerre language is a member of the Volta-Niger branch of Niger-Congo family of languages. Based on lexicostatistical analysis, Kay Williamson first asserted that the Ikwerre, Ekpeye, and Ogba, languages belonged to the same language cluster, and were not dialects. After subsequent studies and more research by both Williamson and Roger Blench, it was concluded that lexical similar languages like Ikwerre, Ogba, Igbo and Ekpeye form a "language cluster" and that they are somewhat mutually intelligible.

Phonology

Vowels

Ikwerre distinguishes vowels by quality (frontedness and height), the presence or absence of nasalization, and the presence or absence of advanced tongue root. There is also a vowel * which is posited to explain syllabic nasal consonants in accounts of the language which state that Ikwerre has no nasal stops. This sound is realized as or a syllabic nasal which is homorganic to the following consonant.

Vowel harmony

Ikwerre exhibits two kinds of vowel harmony:

Consonants

The oral consonants occur before oral vowels, and their nasal allophones before nasal vowels. The "non-explosive stops" are not plosives (not pulmonic) and are equivalent to implosives in other varieties of Igbo. The tap may sometimes be realized as an approximant.

Tone

Ikwerre is a tonal language with seven tones: high, mid, low, high-low falling, high-mid falling, mid-low falling and rising. Ikwerre also has a tonal downdrift. For example: rínya᷆ (high, mid-low falling) means "weight, heaviness", rìnyâ (low, high-low falling) means "female, wife", mụ̌ (rising) means "to learn", mụ̂ (high-low falling) means "to give birth", etc.