Learn Igbo: Telling the Time | Igbo Daily Drops (S3 E177) Week 36

He is standing on the line where the world's time begins — and he still

gets his sister's hour wrong.

In this episode of Igbo Daily Drops, you'll learn 3 phrases for asking and

telling the time: what time is it there, it's four o'clock here, it's five

o'clock there — and why one small question can hold a family together.

Michael Ndụbụisi Hart was born in Woolwich in 1961 to an English mother and

an Igbo father he never met. At sixty-five, a DNA test finds his sister,

Ụgọmma, a market trader in Nkwerre, Imo State. The episode documents the

Igbo habit of locating a person in their day before talking your matter,

the Angelus ringing over a Nkwerre market, and the quiet labour of

children of absence reclaiming an endangered language late in life. It is

intangible cultural heritage, offered in a spirit of cultural understanding

and an African heritage renaissance.

Michael and Ụgọmma are fictional; their world is documented.

Research in this episode draws on Ola Uduku, University of Strathclyde,

2002 — the grandchildren of Igbo settlers abroad are often totally

assimilated, yet occasionally look for their roots.

📖 Today's proverb: Mgbe onye tetara bụ ụtụtụ ya — Whenever a person wakes

up is their morning.

🗣️ Sentences practised today:

1. Gịnị na-akụ ebe ahụ? — What time is it there?

2. Elekere anọ na-akụ ebe a. — It's four o'clock here.

3. N'ebe ahụ, ọ bụ elekere ise. — There, it's five o'clock.

📥 Free Speaking Workbook: learnigbonow.com

🏛️ By every measure UNESCO uses to assess a language's vitality —

intergenerational transmission, community attitudes, government support — Igbo is

vulnerable. This podcast documents Igbo intangible cultural heritage — oral

traditions, social practices, rituals, and knowledge systems — while teaching

conversational Igbo to diaspora learners worldwide. Every episode is part of the

Igbo Daily Drops Living Archive.

Hosted by Yvonne Chioma Mbanefo — Heritage Futurist and Daughter of the soil.

▶️ Watch the visual version on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@LearnIgbo/podcasts

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🌐 learnigbonow.com

Every sentence you learn is a drop. Every drop feeds Oké Osimiri Mmụta Igbo —

the Ocean of Igbo Knowledge.

This has been Igbo Daily Drops with Yvonne Mbanefo.

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Main Channel: @learnigbo on YouTube
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Be one of them. Every sentence you learn is a drop. 
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