Ịjọ (Ijaw)

Ijaw is not a single uniform language but a cluster of closely related varieties spoken by Ijaw communities across the Niger Delta, in Bayelsa, Delta, Rivers and parts of Ondo and Akwa Ibom states. The main varieties include Izon (also called Ịjọ proper, the most widely spoken), Kalabari, Nembe, Okrika and Bonny/Ibani, among others, and while these share a common Ijoid origin, several are not mutually intelligible and are sometimes treated by linguists as distinct languages rather than dialects of one language. Izon is used in some local radio broadcasting and church services in the Niger Delta, and there are ongoing efforts by Ijaw cultural and linguistic bodies to develop primers and literacy materials, though overall use in formal education and national media remains limited compared with Yorùbá, Igbo and Hausa. The Ijaw languages are tonal and have a strong oral tradition tied to riverine and fishing culture, masquerade festivals and the Niger Delta's canoe and boat-building heritage. Transmission to children generally remains strong within Ijaw communities in the Delta, though as with many minority Nigerian languages, urban migration has affected use in some diaspora settings.

Varieties within the Ijaw cluster, most notably Izon, are written using a Latin-based orthography developed through the work of missionary linguists and, more recently, Ijaw language committees and organisations such as the Bible Society of Nigeria and academic linguists working on Izon. These orthographies use additional letters and diacritics to mark vowel qualities and nasalisation not found in English. Because the varieties differ significantly from one another, there is no single unified Ijaw orthography covering all of Izon, Kalabari, Nembe and the other varieties; each has generally been documented and standardised separately, and standardisation is less complete than for Nigeria's three largest languages.