Orthography

This study investigates the phonology of Uvwie, an endangered language spoken in parts of Delta State, aiming to construct orthography for the language. Orthography is a system which facilitates the writing of a language, and its documentation. It also facilitates literacy in the language. It refers to the agreed system (of alphabets) used to represent the spoken form of a given language. Literacy as well as documentation as means for revitalising or maintaining an endangered language requires the creation of a writing system for the language (Cf. Grenoble and Whaley, 2006).The study is thus motivated, in part, by the need to codify the language. In addition, implementing Nigeria’s policy on language of instruction in pre-primary and early primary education (See NPE, 2004) in the Uvwie Local Government Area of Delta State also requires that a writing system should be constructed for Uvwie, the ‘language of the immediate environment’; hence this study. The process employed in designing the proposed orthography in this work is not haphazard but follows certain principles and procedures: main research tools are Sociophonology (cf. Awonusi, 2007; Milroy, 2001; Ugorji, 2009) and the Principles of Orthography (Williamson 1984). Data were drawn from native speakers using the SIL wordlist, and phonetically transcribed.The outcome of the analyses is an inventory of ‘sociophonemes’ and tonemes, to which orthographic equivalence are assigned for the purpose of writing the language.

This work discusses the Igbo sound system and orthography for transcribing and writing Ika. The aim of the study is to employ relevant data in showing that the Igbo sound system and orthography which is presently being used to transcribe and write Ika is descriptively inadequate. The need for this research to Ika language studies is that it observes the various sounds and orthographic symbols in the Ika sound and writing inventory. This work advances the study of descriptive linguistics since it is based on the Ika phonology. The theoretical framework adopted for this study is the Basic linguistic theory (Dixon 1997) which is supported by Williamson’s (1984) Basic Principles for a Good Orthography’. The data relied on for this study comprised primary and secondary data. The primary data consisted of oral data which served as the major source of data, these data were gotten from
competent native speakers and users of Ika languages. The bulk of the secondary data are documented works ranging from dictionaries, online and hard print journals, textbooks and unpublished projects and thesis. The 9 relevant data selected from the bulk of data collected were then subjected to a verification process by consulting with language teachers, competent
speakers and students of the language under study so as to authenticate the data. In the course of this study, we discovered firstly that the current Ika orthography which is based on the Igbo sound system has 36 sounds as against the 38 sounds present in the Ika sound system. In other words, there are sounds in Ika that are not adequately represented in the Igbo sound
system and orthography such as /ɛ/ half open front unrounded vowel /u᷈ / close back rounded nasal vowel, /ɛ̃/ half open front unrounded nasal vowel, /ɔ/̃ half open back rounded nasal vowel, /a/ open central unrounded nasal vowel, / m / voiced labio-dental nasal, / r̥/ voiceless alveolar tap. This study has attempted to show the inadequacies in the current Ika sound system and
orthography, as well as suggesting some meaningful proposals to correct the inadequacies.