As someone from the eastern part of Nigeria, the Igbo tribe, learning my language wasn't a huge challenge for me, even though I wasn't raised in the East, I will say I learnt to communicate in Igbo better when I had the chance and the opportunity to school in the Eastern region, it wasn't difficult improving in the language since I grew up hearing my parents speak Igbo, getting to improve and learning Igbo language in the right environment was an interesting and a very meaningful experience. Igbo is my native language, and being in an environment where it became a daily means of communication, interaction and part of my everyday life made improvements faster and easier.
However, if it wasn't my tribe, learning might be difficult, because I hear people from other tribes say Igbo is a difficult language to learn, and I also have the same challenges when I try to learn a different language too, learning a different language requires enough time, patience, and consistent practicing of that to master it completely.
One of the things I love about my language is its uniqueness, Igbo is a very tonal language, a particular word can mean many things and what makes the difference is the tone and pitch. A perfect example is the word "Akwa" it could mean egg, clothes, cry and bed. What makes the difference and understanding of the particular "Akwa" is just the pitch and tone used in pronunciation. I can't go further to explain that here and also give more examples, but I love how tonal the Igbo language is.
To me, as an igbo girl, this is interesting, but to a complete stranger it would only make learning difficult for them, because learning to recognize and using correctly the tonal marks in written Igbo would require some effort.
It's also important to know that speaking a language naturally and effortlessly, is not the same as understanding its grammatical rules and writing conventions. I found it really difficult to learn how to write Igbo, and I'm not been perfect till date.
Another interesting part of the Igbo language is the numerous dialects, different communities in Igbo have their own unique dialect, most times I find myself understanding the dialect of some communities, but we have the general Igbo and that's where a learner is meant to start learning from. The different dialects make the Igbo language rich and culturally significant, but for a learner, it will only make the Igbo language more complicated to speak, learn to write will require extra effort too.
If I had to learn Igbo from scratch, it's going to be easy too, especially because I'm exposed to people who communicate with me in Igbo, I would be familiar with many words, expressions, and even sentence structures.
I would only have difficulty with the aspects of writing, like the alphabet, spelling, grammar, and proper sentence, reading and writing might be the only part it gets difficult, because my foundation in the written part isn't strong, my primary and secondary school never taught me that because it wasn't in the Eastern region, I was never familiar with it from childhood
However, I believe learning my language will require regular practice of the language , reading books written in igbo language, and communicating with the native speakers. Constant communication with native speakers will really help a learner, because the native speakers have knowledge of the language, including the Proverbs, idioms and many more.
In conclusion, learning the Igbo language isn't difficult, it just requires dedication and consistency. To me, the Igbo language is a way to preserve my culture, my identity, it's a way to feel connected to my root, culture, identity and history.