Mbube Heritage Foundation hello@mbubeheritage.org

A language is kept alive in the voices of the people who speak it.

Mbe is the language of the Mbube people of Ogoja, in Cross River State, Nigeria. The Mbube Heritage Foundation is documenting it word by word, with the people who speak it, so that it is here for the next generation at home and in the diaspora.

  • lelomvoice
  • lepomword
  • butemheart
  • etohhome

Entries from Joseph Odu's First Step in Mbe Vocabulary, the first dictionary of the language. Spellings and tones are being confirmed with speakers; Mbe is listed as mfo in ISO 639-3.

Three things, done together

Each one is checked by Mbube speakers before it is published.

The dictionary
A Mbe–English dictionary of more than a thousand words, with the sound, the tone and the way each word is used.
The voices
Every word recorded by a speaker from Mbube, said alone and in a sentence, so the language is kept as it sounds and not only as it is written.
The archive
Everything written or recorded about Mbe and the Mbube people, gathered in one place and kept safe.

Do you hold anything in Mbe?

Recordings, papers, photographs, letters, a grandparent's stories, a book from the parish or the school — if it concerns Mbe or the Mbube people, we would be glad to hear from you.

hello@mbubeheritage.org