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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 August 2012
Tucked away in a salient on the eastern borders of Iboland lies a small portion of land, the home of those who, for many centuries, were the acknowledged leaders of the tribe, to whose oracle litigants resorted as to a final Court of Appeal, and who, by their organizing genius and trading ability, obtained charge of all the important trade routes, and of the greater portion of the middleman's profits accruing from the barter of European goods, and, one must add, from slave traffic. Not thirty years have yet passed since the British expedition of 1901–2, by its destruction of the Aro Long Juju, dealt the blow which has led to a great loss of Arochukuan prestige.
page 57 note 1 The orthography used in this article contains additional symbols to those used in the Institute's Memorandum on Orthography. The authors have introduced these signs tentatively for the purpose of this article to represent sounds not dealt with in the Memorandum. In some details the script proposed might possibly be simplified. The letter j might be used instead of the inverted f. The sound here written kb is practically identical with that written kp in other West African languages, e.g. Ewe, and it might prove more practical to write it with kp.—EDITOR.
page 62 note 1 ‘Front’ and ‘back’ are used in the technical phonetic sense, and refer to the part of the tongue mainly concerned in the formation of the vowels.
page 62 note 2 The Cardinal Vowels are a set of vowel sounds with definite tongue positions and known acoustic qualities, which have been chosen (irrespective of any language) as a basis of comparison for the vowels of any language or dialect. For further information see The Pronunciation of Russian by Trofimov and D. Jones (Camb. Univ. Press).
page 62 note 3 ‘Close’ and ‘open’ in the technical phonetic sense.
page 68 note 1 Since this article was written we have had an opportunity of working with another Ibo from Nmanelo, Port Harcourt district. We find that he uses the vowel system described in this article: the sounds we have written b and kb are distinctive but not made exactly as by the Aro speaker: the tones of the words which are common to both dialects are the same. The alphabet suggested would serve admirably if l were added, as this sound occurs in this dialect.
