The Ábá language – the Secret Language of the Awka Craftsworkers’ Guild:

Guilds and exclusive societies often had ‘trade secrets’ and confidential information which they tried to keep away from non-members. One of the ways of passing secret information back and forth was through the use of a communication medium understood only by the members of that exclusive society – a code or a secret language.

Awka developed its own secret language; they called it Ábá. Speaking Ábá was referred to as mbụ Ábá (literally, ‘chanting Ábá’). At first, Ábá was just a disguised version of the Igbo variety spoken in Awka. The syllables of a word or a sentence would be rearranged in an attempt to make them undecipherable. Let’s look at some examples:

Nwanne m (my sibling) in Ábá was nnenwa m.
Nne nwanya (elderly woman) was rendered as nnya nwene.
Ọ vbụ nnenne mmadi (he is a good person) became Ọ vbụ mmana nnedi.
Egwu na-atụ m (I’m scared) was Itu na-egwu m.

As time went on these simple distortions were vastly improved upon, and Ábá developed into an independent language of its own with its own vocabulary, its own intonation.

The following Ábá words clearly weren’t Igbo words distorted:
Aja la atukpa – sheep
Nyashika – dog
Pinyalu nvuve-e – he-goat
Ikolomi – ram
Gbeshi – goat, or yam
Bushi – woman
Vbiana – market
Ko-oshi – money

Neither is this Ábá sentence:

Lita gbeshi na anakwu na ubaladogu – ‘Buy yam and fish and palm-oil’.