Obolo language

Obolo
Andoni
Native to	Nigeria
Region	Rivers State, Akwa Ibom State
Ethnicity	Obolo people
Native speakers	318,000 (2011)
Language family	Niger–Congo? Atlantic–Congo Benue–Congo Cross River Lower Cross Obolo
Language codes
ISO 639-3	ann
Glottolog	obol1243

Obolo (or Andoni) is a major Cross River language of Nigeria. Obolo is the indigenous name of a community in the eastern Delta of the River Niger, better known as Andoni (the origin of this latter name being uncertain). Obolo refers to the people, the language as well as the land. It is an agglutinative, an SVO and a tonal language.

Orthography

Brief History

"The first published materials in Obolo language were some almanacs and calendars which were printed in early 1940's" by Andoni Progressive Union. It is believed that writing in the language may have started much earlier. After the almanacs and calendars, many hymns and prayer books have been printed by some churches in the area. Apart from these, in 1968, Mr. M.M. Urang wrote the first primer in Obolo language. This was the first published non-church book in the language. All this while, there was no established orthography.

The first professional linguistic analysis of Obolo was done between 1981 and 1983 by Dr. Nickolas Faraclas, of the University of California, Berkeley who was directed to Obolo by Prof. Kay Williamson of the University of Port Harcourt and the Rivers Readers Project, to work with the then Obolo Language Committee. Faraclas analyzed the language and wrote an extensive description of the phonology and grammar of the language, and helped to design the Orthography.

In 1991, Uche Aaron, in collaboration with the Obolo Language and Bible Translation Organisation, revised the orthography. The Nigeria Educational Research and Development Council (NERDC) published this updated orthography in 2000. Aaron's major contribution to this orthography, apart from some minor improvements, are in the areas of word boundaries and tone marking system.

Writing System

Obolo language is written in the Latin script. The alphabet is as follows:

Obolo alphabet

a	b	ch	d	e	f	g	gb
gw	i	j	k	kp	kw	l	m
n	n̄	nw	ny	o	ọ	p	r
s	(sh)	t	u	(v)	w	y	(z)

• The characters in bracket are dialect-specific.
• Tone marks can be added to some letters. The tone bearers are the vowels a, e, i, o, ọ, u as well as the consonants m and n.

Obolo is a tone language. There are five tones in the language: low, high, mid, falling and rising tone.

Indication of tones

High tone	(´) acute
Low tone	(`) grave
Mid tone	(ˉ) macron or unmarked
Falling tone	(ˆ) circumflex
Rising tone	(ˇ) caron

In writing, only the low tone (`) and falling tone (ˆ) are indicated. Tones are marked compulsorily on the first syllables of verbs and verbal groups. For other classes of words, only minimal pairs should be marked to avoid ambiguity.

Dialects

There are six major dialect groups in the language, namely: (from west to east): Ataba, Unyeada, Ngo, Okoroete, Iko and Ibot Obolo. Ataba, Unyeada and Ngo dialects are spoken in Andoni LGA of Rivers State; Okoroete and Iko dialects is spoken in Eastern Obolo LGA of Akwa Ibom State while Ibot Obolo is spoken in Ibeno LGA of Akwa Ibom State. Okoroete dialect is also spoken in one community in Andoni LGA. Ngo is the prestige dialect, hence the standard literary form of Obolo draws heavily from it. However, all verbs in the Standard Obolo are conjugated according to Ataba dialect.

Numerals

Obolo language now uses a decimal counting system. "The modern counting system evolved with the publication of Aya Ifuk Obolo by the Obolo Language & Bible Translation Project in 1985. It is a shift from the vigesimal 20-based counting to the decimal 10 -based counting system. The new system is much simpler than the old counting system, which is very limited and complex." The primary numerals are as follows:

0 - ofok

1 - ge

2 - iba

3 - ita

4 - ini

5 - go

6 - gweregwen

7 - jaaba

8 - jeeta

9 - onaan̄ge

ten - akọp

hundred - efit

thousand - obop

million - efie

billion - ego

trillion - ngwugwu

Obolo literature

• The first primer was written by M.M. Urang in 1968.
• Ikpa Urọk, a book of folktales in different dialects of Obolo, was published in 1985.
• Adasi Ikpa Obolo, a primer following the approved orthography, was published in 1985; last revised in 2023.
• The New Testament was published in 1991.
• The Bible in Obolo was completed by the Obolo Language and Bible Translation Organization in 2012 and dedicated in 2014. Obolo is the 23rd Nigerian language to have the complete Bible.
• The Obolo language website was launched in 2016.
• The first literary material on Literature in the Mother-Tongue; a novel for Junior Secondary Schools and public readership, Mbuban Îchaka by Isidore Ene-Awaji © Obolo Language & Bible Translation Organization, was published in 2010.

Regulation

Obolo language is regulated by the Obolo Language and Bible Translation Organization (OLBTO), a community-owned research and development organization that does dialect surveys and research, oversees the development and introduction of new terminologies, publishes books in the language, etc.