This is the first comprehensive and authoritative dictionary of the Igbo language, one of the three national languages of Nigeria. Michael J. C. Echeruo, a native speaker of Igbo, focuses on basic words and phrases that the twenty million speakers of Igbo encounter in everyday life--in conversation and in Igbo texts. Recognizing the absence of a single dominant dialect, the author collects words from all of them, with emphasis on the predominant Owerri and Onitsha dialects. The book also includes an English-Igbo index listing Igbo equivalents for particular English words.

In the...