Endocentric Compounds Denoting Locations

Endocentric compounds analysed in this section are compounds that refer to places or locations. Examples of locative compounds in the research corpus include ọkụ mmụọ “hell”, ọkụ ala mmụọ “hell”, eluigwe “heaven”, alaeze “kingdom”, ebe nzute “synagogue”, ụlọ nsọ

“temple”, and ebe ịchụaja “altar”. Apart from kingdom and altar, the other concepts are distinctly Christian concepts and as such Igbo had no words for them. Below I present how the use of these compounds in the IBTs entails the elaboration of Igbo.

a. Ọkụ Mmụọ and Ọkụ Ala Mmụọ (Hell)

Hell is defined in the Cambridge Dictionary as “in some religions, the place where some people are believed to go after death to be punished forever for the bad things they have done during their lives”. This conceptualization of life after death was different from what the Igbo believed prior to their encounter with Christianity (c.f. Section 1.1.1). In the Igbo cosmology prior to their encounter with Christianity, at death people who lived a good life and for whom complete funeral rites have been performed go to ala mmụọ or land of the dead and join the ranks of the ancestors called ndị ichie. However, dead persons for whom complete funeral rites were not performed for some reasons (see Section 1.1.1) hover in the land of the living as akalogeli.

For the concept of hell, the IIB, NIB, UIBN and ICB use ọkụ mmụọ, a compound formed from ọkụ “fire” and mmụọ “spirit”. On their part, the UIB, ILB and IRE use ọkụ ala mmụọ, ala meaning “land”. So, ọkụ mmụọ means “the fire of the spirits” while ọkụ ala mmụọ means

“the fire of the land of the spirits”. Both compounds have ọkụ as the head element, but

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while ọkụ mmụọ emphasizes that the fire is associated with spirits, ọkụ ala mmụọ places the emphasis on the land of the spirits. These require expatiation.

The concept of mmụọ is complex and is discussed in more details in Chapter 5. It will suffice here to highlight two implications of the use of mmụọ as one of the components of the compounds. As mentioned in Section 1.1.1, the Igbo believe that the dead continue to live in another world and engage in activities similar to those of the living. It is also believed that the dead eat similar food like the living, which explains the categorization of certain food items as belonging to the mmụọ. According to Williamson (1972: 291), when mmụọ post-modifies an object, usually a plant, it denotes “a poisonous, non-edible, degenerate, or abnormal variety, as opposed to the non-poisonous, edible, normal kind”. An example is ede mmụọ – ede being cocoyam. Ede mmụọ is defined in Williamson (1972: 291) as “inedible plant similar to cocoyam”. This supposed variety of cocoyam is not good for human consumption and is thus believed to be edible to the mmụọ. By inference, mmụọ is used in such contexts for items the people do not know their use or items they do not understand.

So, they attribute these items to the spirits. Ọkụ mmụọ is apparently coined to suggest that the fire is such that humans do not understand such that it can only come from the spirits.

On the one hand, it is possible that the term had been used as a hyperbole for a wildfire before the IBTs were translated. In that case, the use of ọkụ mmụọ in the IBTs designates a Christian concept, thereby extending the Igbo Christian register. On the other hand, ọkụ mmụọ might be a novel coinage first used in the IBTS, in which case its creation also expands the vocabulary of the Igbo language.

As mentioned above, ọkụ ala mmụọ places the emphasis on the land of the spirits, and not on the spirits like ọkụ mmụọ. The choice of emphasis might be linked to the Igbo veneration of the ancestors:

Igbo traditional religion was a way of life which involved reciprocal rights and obligations between the material world of the Igbo and the immaterial world of the spirits, the objective being to maintain harmony between both worlds, ensure peace and prosperity for the people and the survival of their lineages through time. (Ubah 1988: 71)

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The word mmụọ is also used for masked spirits or egwugwu (c.f. Achebe 1958:29). These egwugwu are seen as incarnates of the dead ancestors who visit the living from ala mmụọ

“the land of the dead”. This belief system of the Igbo posed a serious obstacle to the teachings of the Christians and so they (the Christians) devised ways of circumventing this obstacle, one of which is to denigrate the existing system of worship. Ubah (1988: 76) summarizes this attack on the Igbo belief in the ancestors thus:

The religious attention paid to ancestors was also of no value. These dead people, it was contended, had lost all connections with the world and were incapable of influencing the affairs of men one way or the other. All those sacrifices made to them, like those to the deities, were a waste of time and resources, and the people should neither look up to the ancestors for help nor believe that they had ever been, or would ever be, reincarnated.

The choice of creating the word for hell, using ala mmụọ as a component of the innovated compound might then be seen as part of the ideological move to denigrate the Igbo reverence of the ancestors. In fact, ala mmụọ is used in both the Igbo Anglican and Catholic catechisms for hell in their renderings of hell in the line of the Apostles’ Creed that reads

“He descended into hell”. This is a subtle but powerful attack on the Igbo veneration of the ancestors to associate ala mmụọ, the abode of the ancestors and where the Igbo elders and young men initiated into the egwugwu cult tell the women and non-initiates that the egwugwu comes from. So, rather than see ala mmụọ in a positive light considering that the ancestors are said to dwell there, ala mmụọ is now portrayed as the place where evil doers get punished for their evil deeds, or the place that contains the fire that burns evil doers as punishment for their evil deeds. On the one hand, the compound ọkụ ala mmụọ is an addition to the Igbo lexicon. On the other hand, it changes the perception of a place that had a positive image.

Although both ọkụ ala mmụọ and ọkụ mmụọ are used in the IBTs for hell, it appears the latter has gained more spread among Igbo speakers than the former. Among Igbo children in parts of Anambra State like Ogidi, it is very common to witness this ritual when a child wants to confirm that another child is saying the truth:

163 13. Child A: True to?

Child B: God.

Child A: Ọkụ mmụọ? “Hell?”

Child B: Ebeebe “Forever”

Child A: Onye ga-anwụ “Who will die?”

Child B: Mụ “Me”

In this conversation, Child A asks in whose name Child B swears that they are telling the truth, and Child B responds that it is in the name of God. God is seen as the highest authority in whose name one can swear, and so swearing in his name is serious. The second question reinforces that if B is telling a lie, they would end up in hell and B affirms that they would stay in hell forever. The idea is that if the swearer would take the authority of God for granted, they would not joke with the idea of burning in hell. So, affirming that they are ready to burn in hell forever further reinforces their claim of innocence. The third question is to know whether B willingly accepts that they would die if they are telling a lie and B affirms that too. Often when the person being questioned is being untruthful, they refrain from answering the last question, because it would mean wilfully invoking disaster upon oneself. This ritual demonstrates that ọkụ mmụọ is used by Igbo children for the concept of hell.

b. Eluigwe (Heaven)

The concept of heaven contrasts with hell. The Cambridge Dictionary defines heaven as “in some religions, the place, sometimes imagined to be in the sky, where God or the gods live and where good people are believed to go after they die, so that they can enjoy perfect happiness”. As suggested in the preceding section, the idea of a place good people go to be rewarded for their good deeds was foreign to the Igbo prior to their encounter with Christianity. In fact, the traditional Igbo conceptualization of what constitutes good and bad behaviour that could affect a person’s fate when they die is different from the Christian

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conceptualization. For this concept, all the IBTs use eluigwe apart from the IIB. Eluigwe is a compound formed from elu “above” and igwe “sky”, literally meaning “above the sky”.

This perception of the location of heaven as being somewhere above the sky is contrary to the traditional Igbo worldview highlighted above. Perhaps, it would suffice to illustrate this worldview from Igbo folklore. In “Udeze”, one of the folktales collected in Ogbalu (1973), a famous wrestler is asked by the king to clear the bush in a specific piece of land where spirits live (Ogbalu 1973: 39). This suggests that the boundary between the land of the living and that of the dead is somewhere in the human world. The other location of dead ancestors espoused in Igbo folklore is the earth:

At such times the ancestors of the clan who had been committed to Mother Earth at their death emerged again as egwugwu through tiny ant-holes.

(Achebe 1958: 60)

So, the use of the compound eluigwe in the IBTs, like its opposite ọkụ mmụọ, not only expands the Igbo lexicon with an additional term but also expands the Igbo Christian register. It also introduces a new conceptualization of life after death, whereby it is now believed that good people go to eluigwe to be rewarded for their good deeds and no longer to ala mmụọ where they serve as ancestors.

c. Alaeze (Kingdom)

Kingdom is defined in the Cambridge Dictionary as “a country ruled by a king or queen”.

This concept was not foreign among the Igbo, for there were many known Igbo kings prior to the arrival of the missionaries, for example, the Obi of Onitsha, Obi of Aboh, Asagba of Asaba, among others. As mentioned in Section 1.1, the Igbo were a decentralized and politically fragmented group of people for whom the “largest political unit is the village group (the town) which the Igbo call obodo, ala or mba. This is composed of a number of contiguous villages which believe that they are the collective descendants of a common

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ancestor” (Oguagha and Okpoko 1993: 124). Igbo kings variously called Eze, Obi, Igwe, Akor, and Asagba have their respective villages or towns as their kingdoms. So, a king’s kingdom is identified in Igbo by the name of the village or town, hence expressions like Asagba Asaba “Asagba of Asaba”, Obi Onitsha “Obi of Onitsha”, Igwe Ogidi “Igwe of Ogidi”.

However, kingdom in the Bible often stretches beyond single village or town units as seen in this text from Genesis 10: 10:

14. Mmalite ala-eze-ya bụ Bebel, na Erek, na Akad, na Kalne, n'ala Shaina.

And the beginning of his kingdom was Babel, and Erech, and Accad, and Calneh, in the land of Shinar

This is part of the description of the kingdom ruled by Nimrod. Here, it is seen that Nimrod’s kingdom covers at least four cities, unlike what obtains in Igbo kingdoms. It would then seem awkward for the IBTs to use the Igbo words for village or land for kingdom. Thus, the compound alaeze was created from ala “land” and eze “king” and used for kingdom in all the IBTs apart from the IIB. Alaeze means “the land of the king”.

This innovated compound is used in the Bible to denote both heavenly and earthly kingdoms. However, the use of the term outside the Bible seems to be restricted to references to the kingdom of heaven. During this research, I asked an Igbo man, aged 38, living in Bayreuth, Germany, for the Igbo word for kingdom and he supplied alaeze eluigwe

“the kingdom of heaven”. Although I did not make any reference to heaven or God in the question, the respondent unconsciously added that bit of information, suggesting that alaeze is associated more with the kingdom of God or heaven than the kingdom of mortals.

Indeed, throughout the period of this study, I did not encounter the use of alaeze for a human kingdom. Rather, there are numerous uses of the compound for the kingdom of God or of heaven. This indicates a lexical differentiation of human kingdoms from the kingdom of heaven, i.e., outside the Bible, Igbo speakers use alaeze for the kingdom of heaven and ala or obodo for human kingdoms.

In addition to this lexical differentiation, there is also evidence of the semantic extension of alaeze to also embrace any place of happiness and plentifulness. In a recent telephone conversation with a friend in Nigeria, my friend asked how I was and I responded in Igbo “A

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nọ m ọfụma, sọọsọ agụụ”, meaning “I am fine but for hunger”. At this she retorted jokingly,

“Biko ka m nụlụ gị ife! Ginwa nọ n’anaeze⁷³. Ọkwa Germany ka Ị nọ?”, which loosely translates as “Spare me that tale! You that are in alaeze. Are you not in Germany?”. The idea is that I was not expected to complain of hunger because I live in a country with a strong economy and am expected to have my basic needs met. She captured this idea in the word alaeze, thereby extending the meaning of the word beyond meaning kingdom. Secondly, Nkeonye, an artist from Oko, an Igbo community in Delta State, has this line in one of his songs:

15. Oko bụ obodo m Oko is my town Oko bụ anịeze Oko is anịeze ⁷⁴

Ife dị mma dị n’Oko anyị Good things are in Oko

Anyanwụ alashụ n’ụzọ The sun does not sleep on the road

In this song, the artist uses alaeze to emphasize that Oko is a blessed community. The semantic extension of alaeze from kingdom to embrace this second meaning might have resulted from the fact that many of the occurrences of the word in the Bible, especially the NT, refer to the kingdom of God. The kingdom of God is believed in Christianity to be filled with only positive things, where good people get rewarded for their good deeds. Thus, alaeze is a metaphor for any place deemed to be a paradise of some sort.

Alaeze presents a case of directional equivalence that has evolved into natural equivalence.

The term did not exist prior to the arrival of the Christian missionaries and was created to solve a translation problem. However, it has taken a life of its own in the language and evolved other meanings beyond the original usage in the IBTs. In effect, back-translating the word into English would result in two meanings depending on the context. On the one hand, it would give the original source text word kingdom if the referent is to the kingdom of God or of heaven. On the other hand, it would give terms like “paradise”, “heaven” or any other term that connotes wealth and good life. This is the meaning seen in the song and

73 The substitution of /n/ for /l/ is just an indication of dialectal difference. Both words, alaeze and anaeze, mean the same thing

74 Anịeze is also a dialectal form of alaeze

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telephone conversation mentioned above. This meaning is not found in the IBTs where the compound was formed but was evolved by Igbo speakers outside the Bible. In other words, the lexical elaboration of alaeze in the IBTs was further elaborated by Igbo speakers beyond the use in the IBTs.

d. Ebe Mmụta, Ebe Nzute, Ụlọ Nzukọ, Ụlọ Ọgbakọ and Ụlọ Ekpere (Synagogue)

Synagogue is defined in the Cambridge Dictionary as “a building in which Jewish people worship and study their religion”. The fact that the concept is associated with Judaism means that it was foreign to the Igbo people prior to their encounter with Christianity.

Table 4.1 presents the compounds used in the IBTs for synagogue.

Table 4. 1: The representations of synagogue in the IBTs

Compound Meaning IBTs that used them

Ebe mmụta Place of learning IIB Ebe nzute Meeting spot UIB, IRE

Ụlọ nzukọ Meeting house NIB, UIBN, UIB, ICB, IRE, INWT Ụlọ ọgbakọ House for congregating ICB

Ụlọ ekpere Prayer house ILB

The diversity of terms used for synagogue in the IBTs suggests some level of uncertainty among the IBTs about the most apt term to use, and, perhaps, dissatisfaction with terms used by other IBTs. From Table 4.1, while the first two compounds use the general term ebe

“spot” as the head of the compounds, the last three emphasize that a synagogue is a house.

The components modifying the heads in each case also suggest different ideas of what a synagogue is. While ebe mmụta and ụlọ ekpere suggest that a synagogue is a place for learning and prayer respectively, ebe nzute, ụlọ nzukọ and ụlọ ọgbakọ see it as a meeting spot.

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These compounds probably existed in Igbo prior to the Christianization of the Igbo people.

For one, apart from ụlọ ekpere, these compounds used for synagogue are all secular terms that could refer to other concepts. For illustration, ebe mmụta could refer to any school or place of learning, ebe nzute, ụlọ nzukọ and ụlọ ọgbakọ could refer to any venue where members of any association hold their meetings, while ụlọ ekpere could be any house where prayers are held, including churches. So, the use of these terms in the IBTs is an extension of the Igbo Christian register. In addition to their secular or non-Biblical (in the case of ụlọ ekpere) meanings, these terms are now given a Christian religious signification in the IBTs. Incidentally, there is no evidence to suggest that these innovations and the meanings they have in the IBTs spread into the Igbo language beyond their use in Bible readings.

Im Dokument Bible Translation and Language Elaboration : The Igbo Experience (Seite 179-187)