Simple past tense in Igbo

Welcome welcome!

In today’s lesson, we will be looking at how to create sentences in the simple past tense in Igbo.

The simple past tense refers to something that has already happened.

For example in English we have:

I slept.
They played football.
We ate rice.

Now, we are going to look at how sentences in the simple past tense are created in Igbo.

The past tense marker in Igbo is made up of 2 parts, the letter ‘r’ and a vowel ‘v’ i.e. ‘rv’ (the vowel ‘v’ can be any of the 8 igbo vowels a, e, i, ị, o, ọ, u, ụ)

This ‘-rv’ is literally just added to the verb root (you know the Igbo verbs list from before? Essentialy, just remove the letter “‘í” from the beginning that will give you the root verb in Igbo).

This might all sound a little confusing, so I´m going to show you a simple 4 step process to put an Igbo verb in the past tense.

How to put an Igbo verb in the Simple Past Tense

1. Highlight the vowel at the end of the word
2. Add the letter “r” to the end of the verb
3. Add the vowel you highlighted to the end of the word
4. Make all the accents on the verb downward facing

Example 1

Put the verb gá into the simple past tense

1. Highlight the vowel at the end of the word

á

2. Add the letter “r” to the end of the verb

gá + r = gár

3. Add the vowel you highlighted to the end of the word

gár + á = gárá

4. Make all the accents on the verb downward facing

gàrà

Example 2

Put the verb rí into the simple past tense

1. Highlight the vowel at the end of the word

í

2. Add the letter “r” to the end of the verb

rí + r = rír

3. Add the vowel you highlighted to the end of the word

rír + í = rírí

4. Make all the accents on the verb downward facing

rìrì

Example 3

Put the verb mé into the simple past tense

1. Highlight the vowel at the end of the word

é

2. Add the letter “r” to the end of the verb

mé + r = mér

3. Add the vowel you highlighted to the end of the word

mér + é = méré

4. Make all the accents on the verb downward facing

mèrè

See a break down of Igbo verb formation below

Verb root	English	-rv	Past tense	English
gá	go	rá	gàrà	went
rí	eat	rí	rìrì	ate
mé	do	ré	mèrè	did
zụ́	buy	rụ́	zụ̀rụ̀	bought
kpọ́	call	rọ́	kpọ̀rọ̀	called

We have seen how the simple past form of verbs are formed in the above table. Now, here are some example sentences in the simple past tense.

Igbo simple past tense sentences

Igbo	English
Há gàrà áhị́á	They went to market
Ó rìrì jí	He ate yam
Ànyị́ sàrà ákwà	We washed clothes
Únù kpọ̀rọ̀ ḿ	You all called me

The special case of ‘I’ in Igbo

As with pronouns and with basic Igbo sentences, past tense sentences with the word ‘I’ are treated differently in Igbo.

I know, I know so many rules, but don’t worry we’re almost there…

2 Main differences

1. The verb comes before the pronoun “I”
2. The prefix “A” or “E” is added to the verb using the vowel harmony rule

Verb Harmony rule recap

Essentially Igbo verbs can be divided into 2 groups which I will call Group 1 (which has light vowels) and Group 2 (which has heavy vowels) the verbs in the groups are

Group 1 contains the following vowels

e, i, o, u

Group 2 contains the following vowels

a, ị, ọ, ụ

Remember in the Igbo Vowel Harmony rule, the vowels in each group go together in word formation, they don’t criss-cross.

So if the verb ends in “i, o or u” then the prefix would be “e” and if the verb ends in “ị, ọ or ụ” then the prefix would be “a”

Igbo simple past tense sentences with the pronoun ‘I‘

Prefix	Verb root	rv	Pronoun	Sentence	English
É	rí	rì	ḿ	Érìrì m	I ate
Á	zụ́	rụ̀	ḿ	Ázụ̀rụ̀ m bọ́ọ̀lụ̀	I bought ball
É	mé	rè	ḿ	Émèrè m íhé	I did something
Á	gá	rà	ḿ	Ágàrà m ụ́lọ̀ụ́kà	I went to church

That’s it for today. We went over quite a lot so don’t stress if you feel like you didn’t get everything the first time round, keep coming back to the lesson until you feel confident in what you’re doing.

Keep on learning Igbo!

See you in the next lesson.

Ka ọ dị!