Obolo Language

Obolo language is a major Lower Cross language. It is spoken in the Niger Delta region of Southern Nigeria: in Andoni LGA in River State and in Eastern Obolo LGA in Akwa Ibom State. A fraction of Obolo speakers can also be found in Ibeno LGA in Akwa Ibom State, though the Ibeno people speak Ibono as their native language, but they have a strong connection with the Obolos.


Obolo language is an agglutinating language, which means that the morphemes are stringed together. (Other examples of agglutinating languages are Turkish and Quechua). Obolo is also an SVO language; and all verbs are subject-marked. Obolo has five dialects: Ataba, Ibot Obolo, Ngo, Okoroete and Unyeada. The prestige dialect is Ngo, and the standard orthography depends heavily on it.


Obolo is a tone language. It has four tones: low, mid, high, rising and falling tones. In Obolo standard orthography, only the low tone and falling tone are indicated; others are not indicated. Again, tones are indicated only on the first syllable of verbs but not on the other syllables, except where it it's necessary to clear ambiguity. In such cases, an authoritative text will show the way to go.


The Obolo alphabet (Abiche Obolo) consists of 24 single letters and 8 digraphs.

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Reading and Writing Obolo

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Typing Obolo Language

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