Chapter One
Introduction
1.0 General Background
Kórò is a name of the main language, Ija is the name of the town that the speakers of Kórò live. The speakers are known as Kórò-Ija, sometime they are called Ìjá-Kórò. Majority of the speakers of this language resided at Ija, southern part of Abuja (FCT). The Ìjá-Kórò people are about 900,000 in population (This is from the head count of the year 2000 census population).
Kórò as a language has three dialect, Ìjá-Kórò, Kórò-Shako and Kórò-Kaffin. Kórò-Shako and Kórò-Kaffin are spoken in Niger State, at small town called Shako and Kaffin respectively. But their dialects are not so different from each other, both speakers (Shako and Kaffin) can speaks Ìjá-Kórò. But Ìjá-Kórò speakers cannot speaks Kórò-Shako and Kórò-Kaffin because, they are far from them.
Ìjá-Kórò people exist with two neighboring tribes Ija Gwari and Bwari. Therefore, Ìjá-Kórò speakers are multilingual, i.e. they speaks Hausa, Gwari and Ìjá-Kórò.
1.1 Historical Background
Ìjá-Kórò migrated from Zùbà as a result of fertile land for farming. Zùbà is the largest town, where so many farmers has occupied the land, so Kórò people move to Ija in 1814. They settled at Ìjá-Kórò and starts farming till date.