A Grammar of Contemporary Igbo
A Grammar of Contemporary Igbo

Author: Emenanjo, E. Nolue

Publisher: M & J Grand Orbit Communications

Published: 2016-02-22

Total Pages: 676

ISBN-13: 9785412733

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In twenty-five chapters this book covers phonology, morphology, syntax and semantics. The chapters are organized in four discrete parts: phonology, morphology, syntax and semantics. They are uneven in terms of scope covered, length, the density of their contents and their degrees of difficulty. Each chapter ends with ‘Some References’ relevant to both the topic(s) treated in the chapter, in Igbo linguistics, and in general linguistics.

The Sacred Language of the Abakuá
The Sacred Language of the Abakuá

Author: Lydia Cabrera

Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi

Published: 2020-12-28

Total Pages: 693

ISBN-13: 149682945X

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In 1988, Lydia Cabrera (1899–1991) published La lengua sagrada de los Ñáñigos, an Abakuá phrasebook that is to this day the largest work available on any African diaspora community in the Americas. In the early 1800s in Cuba, enslaved Africans from the Cross River region of southeastern Nigeria and southwestern Cameroon created Abakuá societies for protection and mutual aid. Abakuá rites reenact mythic legends of the institution’s history in Africa, using dance, chants, drumming, symbolic writing, herbs, domestic animals, and masked performers to represent African ancestors. Criminalized and scorned in the colonial era, Abakuá members were at the same time contributing to the creation of a unique Cuban culture, including rumba music, now considered a national treasure. Translated for the first time into English, Cabrera’s lexicon documents phrases vital to the creation of a specific African-derived identity in Cuba and presents the first “insider’s” view of this African heritage. This text presents thoroughly researched commentaries that link hundreds of entries to the context of mythic rites, skilled ritual performance, and the influence of Abakuá in Cuban society and popular music. Generously illustrated with photographs and drawings, the volume includes a new introduction to Cabrera’s writing as well as appendices that situate this important work in Cuba’s history. With the help of living Abakuá specialists in Cuba and the US, Ivor L. Miller and P. González Gómes-Cásseres have translated Cabrera’s Spanish into English for the first time while keeping her meanings and cultivated style intact, opening this seminal work to new audiences and propelling its legacy in African diaspora studies.

A Dictionary of Igbo Names
A Dictionary of Igbo Names

Author: Chibuzo N a Uruakpa, PhD

Publisher:

Published: 2020-08-25

Total Pages: 206

ISBN-13:

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This dictionary is the fruit of a five-year research work on the meaning of Igbo names, an indispensable resource material for all those who are interested in the culture of the Igbo ethnic group in general, and the cultural dimensions of Igbo names, in particular. Spoken by about 30 million people in southeastern Nigeria, Igbo is the mother tongue of diverse people groups who have their homeland in a block of territory delimited to north by the Edo-Igala-Idoma ethnic groups, Urhobo to the west, the Bights of Benin and Biafra to the south and the Ibibio-Anang to the south. These groups who live in the area so delimited are referred to as Igbo and use the Igbo language to communicate their experience of being-in-the-world as well as their overall worldview. Igbo names are not mere biometric elements or identification labels tagged onto the individual to distinguish them from others; they reflect socio-cultural, philosophical and religious beliefs. They are an expression of long-held societal ethos and often communicate personal life-journeys and life-time family experiences, or even those of the clan. Also, names could reflect parents' aspirations for their children. In other words, names have important meanings and often encapsulate the epistemology and life experiences of their bearers. Suffice it to say that Igbo names are the most important part of a person's identity. It is this wealth of cultural information that this dictionary places at disposal of its user's . The book is divided into two parts for boys' names and girls' names respectively; and each name has not just an English translation, but also a cultural comment as to its inspiration, as well as a pronunciation guide. These two parts are preceded by the technical and theoretical study of Igbo linguistics, phonetics and phonology presented in the introduction. This section is aimed at eliminating the difficulty non-Igbo speakers encounter in pronouncing Igbo words/names. The work is completed by a rich bibliography for further cultural exploration.

Voice of the Leopard
Voice of the Leopard

Author: Ivor L. Miller

Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi

Published: 2010-01-06

Total Pages: 401

ISBN-13: 1604738146

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In Voice of the Leopard: African Secret Societies and Cuba, Ivor L. Miller shows how African migrants and their political fraternities played a formative role in the history of Cuba. During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, no large kingdoms controlled Nigeria and Cameroon's multilingual Cross River basin. Instead, each settlement had its own lodge of the initiation society called Ékpè, or “leopard,” which was the highest indigenous authority. Ékpè lodges ruled local communities while also managing regional and long-distance trade. Cross River Africans, enslaved and forcibly brought to colonial Cuba, reorganized their Ékpè clubs covertly in Havana and Matanzas into a mutual-aid society called Abakuá, which became foundational to Cuba's urban life and music. Miller's extensive fieldwork in Cuba and West Africa documents ritual languages and practices that survived the Middle Passage and evolved into a unifying charter for transplanted slaves and their successors. To gain deeper understanding of the material, Miller underwent Ékpè initiation rites in Nigeria after ten years' collaboration with Abakuá initiates in Cuba and the United States. He argues that Cuban music, art, and even politics rely on complexities of these African-inspired codes of conduct and leadership. Voice of the Leopard is an unprecedented tracing of an African title-society to its Caribbean incarnation, which has deeply influenced Cuba's creative energy and popular consciousness.

Dictionary of Dictionaries and Eminent Encyclopedias
Dictionary of Dictionaries and Eminent Encyclopedias

Author: Thomas Kabdebo

Publisher:

Published: 1997

Total Pages: 440

ISBN-13:

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Enlarged by some 50 percent and equipped with more comprehensive name and subject indexes, the second edition of this unique guide contains bibliographic and descriptive annotations for 8,000 dictionaries. It features 1,500 additional bilingual works, 400 new subject categories, and all the major electronic dictionaries produced in English. While the primary emphasis is on language dictionaries, subject dictionaries on topics as varied as ceramics, bookbinding, and theatre as well as dictionaries issued by international bodies and agencies are included. Covering all the world's languages, works may be bilingual, monolingual, or multilingual as long as there is an English element.

Things Fall Apart
Things Fall Apart

Author: Chinua Achebe

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 1994-09-01

Total Pages: 226

ISBN-13: 0385474547

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“A true classic of world literature . . . A masterpiece that has inspired generations of writers in Nigeria, across Africa, and around the world.” —Barack Obama “African literature is incomplete and unthinkable without the works of Chinua Achebe.” —Toni Morrison Nominated as one of America’s best-loved novels by PBS’s The Great American Read Things Fall Apart is the first of three novels in Chinua Achebe's critically acclaimed African Trilogy. It is a classic narrative about Africa's cataclysmic encounter with Europe as it establishes a colonial presence on the continent. Told through the fictional experiences of Okonkwo, a wealthy and fearless Igbo warrior of Umuofia in the late 1800s, Things Fall Apart explores one man's futile resistance to the devaluing of his Igbo traditions by British political andreligious forces and his despair as his community capitulates to the powerful new order. With more than 20 million copies sold and translated into fifty-seven languages, Things Fall Apart provides one of the most illuminating and permanent monuments to African experience. Achebe does not only capture life in a pre-colonial African village, he conveys the tragedy of the loss of that world while broadening our understanding of our contemporary realities.