Nouns feel like progress. You learn fifty of them and your vocabulary list looks impressive. Then you try to say something and discover you cannot, because nothing in the sentence is doing anything.
Verbs are what make speech possible. These twenty cover most of what an ordinary day contains. Every one is checked against the Igbo dictionary and has audio.
Moving and Being Somewhere
Bịa and gaa are the two verbs you will hear most in a day, because almost every instruction and invitation uses one of them.
Eating and Drinking
Careful with ṅụ. That first letter is ṅ, not n — made at the back of the mouth. Said with a front n it becomes nu, which means push.
Si also means from in other contexts, which is why you will meet it in Kedụ obodo i si? — which town are you from? Same spelling, different word.
Seeing, Having, Holding
Nwe is the verb behind enweghị m — I don’t have — which is one of the most useful negatives a learner can carry.
Speaking and Telling
Igbo separates telling someone something from telling a story. Gwa is the first, kọ the second — and kọ is the verb behind the whole tradition of Igbo storytelling.
The Four That Will Rescue You
These four are the learner’s survival kit, because their negatives are the sentences you will need most often:
- Amaghị m onye ọ bụ. — I do not know who he is.
- Ana m amụ mgbakọ na mwepụ. — I am learning addition and subtraction.
I don’t know, I don’t understand, I’m learning. Say those three in Igbo instead of switching to English, and you stay in the conversation.
Three More Worth Having
Je and gaa both mean go, and you will hear both. Je shows up inside the progressive — Ana m eje ịṅụ mmiri, I am going to drink water.
What to Do With Twenty Verbs
Do not memorise them as a list. Take five and put each one through all three tenses — what you are doing, what you did, what you will do.
Five verbs times three tenses is fifteen sentences you can say, which is more useful than twenty verbs you can only translate. Then add the negatives and you have thirty.
Keep Learning Igbo Verbs
Everyday verbs are the second topic in the Basic Verbs lesson, right after the introduction. The lesson then takes these same verbs through commands, all three tenses, negation and finally real conversation.
👉 Learn Basic Verbs in Igbo free on IgboLearn
💬 Run five of these verbs through every tense in Igbo chat
Related reading: for the ṅ in ṅụ that the warning above is about, the four N’s of Igbo separates all of them properly. The drill at the end is laid out in building Igbo sentences across all three tenses, with the forms themselves in the present, the past and the future, and the negatives in negative verbs in Igbo. Kedụ obodo i si? gets its answer in how to introduce yourself in Igbo.
Bịa (come) and gaa (go) are the two you will hear most in a day, because almost every instruction and invitation uses one of them. After those, chọ (want), ma (know), ghọta (understand) and nwe (have) are the learner’s survival kit — their negatives are the sentences you need most.
The first letter. Ṅụ (drink) starts with ṅ, made at the back of the mouth; said with a front n it becomes nu, which is push. One dot above the letter separates the two words.
It depends which telling you mean. Igbo separates telling someone something from telling a story: gwa is the first, kọ the second — and kọ is the verb behind the word for a story.