English treats feelings as possessions. I have a fear. I am hungry. The person is the subject and the feeling is a property they hold.
Igbo often does it the other way: the feeling arrives, takes hold, fills you. That is not poetic licence — it is the ordinary grammar.
Hunger and Thirst: Agụụ
- agụụ̄ — hunger, desire, thirst
One word for hunger, thirst and desire. Igbo groups them as the same kind of thing — a lack that pulls at you — where English has three separate words.
This is worth knowing before you try to translate I’m thirsty and go looking for a dedicated word. There isn’t one; there is agụụ and the context.
Fear: Ụjọ
- ụjọ — fear
Here is the pattern in its clearest form:
Ụjọ jidere m mgbe m hụrụ ya.
Fear gripped me when I saw her.
Ụjọ is the subject. Jidere is gripped — the past of jide, to grasp or hold. M is the object. The fear did something to the speaker.
- Ihe mere o jiri gbafuo bụ ụjọ. — What made him run away was fear.
Again the fear is the actor. And ụjọ builds a person: onyeụjọ, a coward — person of fear.
Anger: Iwe
- iwe — anger
- Ọ bụ iwe mere o ji ba ha ọgụ. — Anger made him fight them.
- Oke iwe na-ebute ọbara mgbali elu. — Excessive anger causes high blood pressure.
Same structure. Anger made him — the emotion is the cause, the person is acted upon. Notice oke doing the work of excessive.
Joy: Ọṅụ
- ọṅụ̀ — joy
This one has a beautiful sentence attached to it, and it shows where Igbo locates feeling:
Ọṅụ juru n’obi anyị taa maka nwa ọhụrụ a mubatara n’ezinụụlọ anyị.
Our hearts are full of joy today because of the new child born into our family.
Ọṅụ juru n’obi anyị — joy filled in-our-heart. The joy is the subject, juru is filled, and the place it filled is obi, the heart.
There is also the n’ contraction doing its usual job before a vowel, and maka for because of.
Mind the spelling. Ọṅụ with the dot above the ṅ is joy; ọnụ with a plain n is mouth.
Sadness: Nnwute
- nnwutē — sad
- Nwunye ya nọ na nnwute. — His wife is sad.
- Achọghị m ka ị nọrọ na nnwute. — I do not want you to be emotionally hurt.
Here the frame is nọ na — literally be in. You are not sad; you are in sadness. Igbo treats the emotion as a place you occupy.
Feelings Live in the Heart
Obi, the heart, is where Igbo puts temperament, and it builds a family of words you can read once you know the root:
| obiìèbèrè | sympathy |
| obiìọkụ̄ | hot-tempered |
| obiìikē | hardheartedness |
| obiìịdàm̀bà | depression |
All four are compounds — obi joined to a second word — which is why their vowels mix across the join.
The Pattern, in Short
| Feeling | What it does |
|---|---|
| ụjọ | grips you — jidere m |
| iwe | makes you act — mere o ji … |
| ọṅụ | fills your heart — juru n’obi |
| nnwute | is a place you are in — nọ na |
Four feelings, four different verbs, and in none of them do you simply have the emotion.
Practise With Real States
Say how you feel right now, starting the sentence with the feeling rather than with yourself. Then say how someone else felt yesterday, putting the feeling verb in the past.
It will feel back to front for a while. That feeling is the point — it means you have noticed the difference rather than translated past it.
Keep Learning Everyday Igbo
Needs and feelings is the third topic in Igbo You’ll Use Every Day, and the topic after it — likes and dislikes — uses the same reversed structure with masị.
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Related reading: talking about likes and dislikes in Igbo uses this same reversed structure with masị, and parts of the body in Igbo is where obi and the rest of that family come from. Igbo vowel harmony explains why the compounds mix their vowels across the join, the four N’s of Igbo keeps joy apart from mouth, and the many uses of “na” in Igbo covers the n’ contraction in n’obi anyị.
English treats a feeling as something you have. Igbo makes the feeling the actor: ụjọ grips you, iwe makes you, ọṅụ fills your heart, and for sadness you are in it — nọ na, literally be in. In none of them do you simply have the emotion.
There is no dedicated word. Agụụ covers hunger, thirst and desire together — Igbo groups them as the same kind of thing, a lack that pulls at you — so it is agụụ plus the context.
In the heart. Obi builds a whole family of temperament words — sympathy, hot-tempered, hardheartedness — each one obi joined to a second word, which is why their vowels mix across the join.