Learn Igbo: The Past Tense as Remembrance — A Question 220 Years in the Making (EXTENDED) | Igbo Daily Drops (S2 E96) Week 20

A woman from Atlanta walks into a spare parts market in Accra carrying a 

photograph of an 1803 slave manifest. The word written beside her 

ancestor's listed age is: Ibo.

In this episode of Igbo Daily Drops, you'll learn 3 Igbo past tense 

phrases — the sentences that prove your yesterday existed and was worth 

recording.

The Igbo past tense is not grammar. It is attestation. For the more than 

one million Igbo people dispersed across the Atlantic by the transatlantic 

slave trade, the simple act of reporting yesterday's actions — what you 

did, where you went, who rested — was a form of civic existence that 

enslavement systematically destroyed. This episode documents the living 

intersection of Igbo oral tradition, diaspora identity, and the 

marketplace as the primary institution of Igbo civilisational life.

Research in this episode draws on Michael Gomez, New York University, 

1998 — who estimated that the Bight of Biafra contributed nearly one 

quarter of all Africans brought into North America — and Jennifer 

Hildebrand, State University of New York Fredonia, 2006, whose research 

demonstrates that Igbo captives in the Americas maintained a strong 

pan-Igbo identity and offered instruction to new arrivals from Igboland.

📖 Today's proverb: Onye ajụjụ anaghị efu ụzọ — One who asks questions 

does not lose their way.

🗣️ Sentences practised today:

1. Ginị ka i mere unyaahụ? — What did you do yesterday?

2. A gara m ahịa unyaahụ. — I went to the market yesterday.

3. Ha zuru ike unyaahụ. — They rested yesterday.

📥 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

🎧 Spotify: https://tinyurl.com/iddspot

🎧 Apple Podcasts: https://tinyurl.com/iddapple

🌐 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.

FREE RESOURCES: - Igbo Heritage Family Kit: https://learnigbonow.com -
Main Channel: @learnigbo on YouTube
Kids' Channel: @learnigboforkids on YouTube 


Our Mission: Raise 10,000 more next-generation Igbo speakers by next year. 
Be one of them. Every sentence you learn is a drop. 
And every drop feeds Oké Osimiri Mmụta Igbo — the Ocean of Igbo Knowledge. Subscribe now. Foundation episodes begin today.