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Luganda language

Encyclopedia : L : LU : LUG : Luganda language

Luganda, also known as Ganda, is a Bantu language. It is spoken mainly in the Buganda region of Uganda by a population of over three million people. With 100,000 second language speakers, it is the most widely spoken second language in Uganda next to English. The language is used in some primary schools in Buganda as pupils begin to learn English, the official language of Uganda.

Contents

History and development

Luganda, the native language of the people of Buganda, developed over the centuries as a spoken language. Its written form is only as recent as the arrival of the Arab and European influence among the Baganda. It is not easy, and of course it is not within the scope of this discussion, to trace its origins, but it is proper to assume that in a dynamic society with such well structured cultural, social, and political institutions like those of the Baganda, the language must have experienced a reciprocal influence during most of the changes the society went through over the course of its history. It was not however, until after the second half of the nineteenth century, that Luganda was first written down and appeared in print in its own right. The following discussion is neither meant to be a grammar nor a dictionary of the language. The focus is solely on how the language is written (i.e. transcribing sound into alphabetic characters). The first writing clearly was a pilot venture, an improvisation by the early missionaries, who tried to put the language in a written form so that their work among the Baganda would be made easier. The creation of written Luganda words mainly depended on the interpretation and impression that the ears of these foreign listeners, had of the Luganda word sounds. It was not surprising that Speke spelt Kyabaggu (Chabagu). Looking at the earlier prints by various writers such as Speke, Stanley and others would confirm the suspicion that each wrote according to the interpretation his ears perceived. It was therefore necessary to undertake a serious study of the sounds in the Luganda language in order to be able to formulate a proper phonetic system that would help in transferring the sound of words into proper alphabetical symbols that would be meaningful in written form.

The first writers however, were faced with a problem since many of them were not linguists and the Luganda language was starkly different, without any linguistic similarity with their mother tongues. It became an academic adventure for them, trying to correlate the linguistic features of their native languages with the sounds they were simply detecting in the Luganda words. These efforts were necessary because the task of imparting the Christian norms and social standards of their home base to the Baganda demanded a system of communication in a medium that was natural and easily understandable in Buganda. A system of writing in vernacular was therefore developed and for the first time the Luganda word sounds were represented in alphabetical symbols.

Phonology

A notable feature of Luganda phonology is its geminate consonants and distinctions between long and short vowels. Baganda generally consider consonantal gemination and vowel lengthening to be two manifestations of the same effect, which they call simply doubling or stressing.

Vowels




Vowels
Front
Back




Close
i
u




Close-mid
e
o




Open
a





All five vowels have two forms: long and short. The distinction is phonemic but can only occur in certain positions. After two consonants, the latter being a semivowel, and before two consonants, the former being a nasal, all vowels are long. Before a geminate, all vowels are short. The quality of a vowel is not affected by its length.



Consonants

The table below gives the consonant set of Luganda, grouping voiceless and voiced consonants together in a cell where appropriate, in that order.



bilabial
labiodental
alveolar
postalveolar
palatal
velar


plosive
b

d





g


nasal




trill


1





fricative

v
z





affricate



ʤ




approximant






lateral


1





  1. The liquids r and l are actually allophones but since the distinction is reflected in the orthography and is generally recognised by native speakers, they are shown here as separate phonemes.

Apart from [r]/[l] and [ʎ], all these consonants can be geminated, even at the start of a word: bbiri /bb'iri/ (two), kitto /ʧ'itto/ (cold). The affricates [ʧ] and [ʤ] are realised as [tʧ] and [dʤ] respectively when geminated: kinakkinaye /ʧin'atʧinaye/ (to hurry), jjenje /dʤ'eːnʤe/ (cricket).


The nasals [m], [n], [ɲ] and [ŋ] can behave as vowels at the start of a word: nkima /n̩ʧ'ima/ (monkey), mpa m̩p'a (I give), nnyinyonnyola /ɲ̩ɲiɲ'oɲɲola/ (I explain). Therefore it could be said that these consonants are never geminated at the start of a word.



Phonotactics

Syllables can take any of the following forms:
where V = vowel, C = single consonant (including nasals and semivowels but excluding geminates), G = geminate consonant, N = nasal consonant, S = semivowel


These forms are subject to certain phonotactic restrictions:



Elements of orthography


In 1947, an All-Baganda Conference was convened which recommended a Standard Orthography of Luganda. The recommended standard was accepted by the Buganda Government as well as the Protectorate Government and it has governed the written form of Luganda since then. In order to develop such standards special attention must have been paid to the phonetic features in Luganda taking into account the sound units; their tones, syllabic intonations (the stress on various syllables), the recognizable sound pitches and any linguistic features that had to be addressed before launching Luganda into an acceptable written form. In this discussion we shall try to examine a few of the fundamental features of the word sounds in Luganda and how they are interpreted and reflected in a written word form. 



Vowels


The Luganda Language is basically transcribed into five vowel sounds which are represented in the five alphabetical symbols: 
a, (as in attempt) 
e, (as in employ) 
i, (as in import) 
o, (as in only) 
u, (as in blue) 


These are the only sound symbols that create meaning in any written Luganda word. Without them, the consonants do not convey any meaningful communication. The vowels however, on their own can represent communicative sound symbols. For example; 


'aa.' (Symbol of showing or demonstrating) 
'ee?' or 'uu?' (form of answering) 
'ii!' or 'oo!' (exclamation remarks). 


The vowels are called "enjatuza" (letters that make sound in a word) or "empeerezi" (letters that serve the consonants with sounds to create words). Luganda vowel sounds can be either short or long. In general, the short sound is represented by a single vowel while the long sound is represented by double vowels. Note that the double vowel denotes a long sound, as opposed to a repetitive sound. Let us cite a few examples; 


'a' in bana vs baana (four vs children). The 'a' is short in bana but long in baana. 
'e' in sera (dance the dance of the wizards) vs seera (overcharge). The 'e' is short in sera but long in seera. 
'i' in sira (mingle, 'herbal') vs siira (walk slowly). The 'i' is short in sira but long in siira. 
'o' in kola (work or do) vs koola (weed, 'verb'). The 'o' is short in kola but long in koola. 
'u' in tuma (send) vs tuuma (name, 'verb'). The 'u' is short in tuma but long in tuuma. 


It is important to note that changing the length of the vowel sound in general also changes the meaning of the word as the above examples clearly illustrate. Since Luganda follows a 'cv' (consonant/vowel) pattern in its word order, vowels are critical ingredients in every written word. 


Exception: A long vowel is not written double when it occurs at the beginning or end of a word. For example, we write abo (those - the a is long). However, an exception to the exception is yee (yes). Note that words consisting of vowels only are not affected by this. 



Alphabet


The Luganda alphabet is composed of twenty-four letters: 


17 consonants: b, p, v, f, m, d, t, l, r, n, z, s, j, c, g, k, ŋ; 5 vowels: a, e, i, o, u; 2 semi-vowels: w, y. Since the last consonant ŋ does not appear on standard typewriters or computer keyboards, it is often replaced by the combination ng' - including the apostrophe! (Note that in some non-standard authographies, the apostrophe is not used, which can lead to confusion with the distinct and different sound arising from the letter combination ng). In addition, the letter combination ny is treated as a unique consonant. 


Details regarding pronunciation and orthography are given in the section on speaking/writing Luganda.



Grammar

Like the grammars of most Bantu languages, Luganda grammar can be said to be noun-centric in the sense that most words in a sentence agree with a noun. Agreement is by gender and number, and is indicated with prefixes and infixes attached to the start of word stems.
The following parts of speech agree with nouns in class and number:

Noun classes

NB: In the study of Bantu languages the term noun class is often used to refer to what we call gender in comparative linguistics and in the study of certain other languages, and in this article we shall use both terms.


There is some disagreement as to how to count Luganda's noun classes. Some authorities count singular and plural forms as two separate classes while others treat the singular–plural distinction as being separate from class. By the former method there are 19 classes while by the latter there are 10, because one class doesn't have a singular–plural distinction.


The latter method is consistent with the study of non-Bantu languages: we recognise, for example, that German has three genders—masculine, feminine and neuter—and two numbers—singular and plural. To ignore the grammatical and semantic relationship between 'masculine singular' and 'masculine plural' (for example Mann 'man' and Männer 'men') and treat them as two genders out of a total of six would be perverse; so here we shall regard number as being distinct from gender, giving ten noun classes, nine of which have separate singular and plural forms.


As is the case with most languages, the distribution of nouns among the classes is essentially arbitrary, but there are some loose patterns:


The class that a noun belongs to can usually be determined by its prefix:

Note that there are a few only cases where prefixes overlap: the singulars of Classes I and II (both beginning with mu-); the singular of Class III  and plurals of Classes III and VII (all beginning with n-); and the plurals of Classes V and IX (both ma-). Genuine ambiguity, however, is rare, since even where the noun prefixes are the same, the other prefixes are often different. For example there can be no confusion between omuntu (Class I) 'person' and omuntu (Class II) 'seat' in the sentences Omuntu ali wano 'The person is here' and Omuntu guli wano 'The seat is here' because the verb prefixes a- (Class I) and gu- (Class II) are different, even if the noun prefixes are the same. The same is true with the singular and plural of Class III: Embwa talywa 'The dog is eating' vs Embwa zilywa 'The dogs are eating' (compare English The sheep is eating vs The sheep are eating where the noun is invariant but the verb distinguishes singular from plural).


There are also some nouns that have no prefix. Their genders must simply be learnt by rote but such nouns are in fact quite rare:



Agreement with noun classes

Adjectives, verbs, certain adverbs, the possessive and a few special forms of conjunctions are inflected to agree with nouns in Luganda.



Adjectives

As in most Indo-European languages, adjective must agree in gender and number with the nouns they qualify. For example:
The adjective -lungi changes its prefix according to the gender (Class I or II) and number (singular or plural) or the noun it's qualifying (compare Italian bella ragazza, belle ragazze, bello ragazzo, belli ragazzi).



Verbs

As in many Afro-Asiatic languages, every verb must also agree with its subject in gender and number (as opposed to number only as in Indo-European languages). For example:
Here, the verb nywa changes its prefix to according to the gender and number of its subject (compare Arabic ar-rajul yashrib 'the man drinks', ar-rijaal yashribou 'the men drink', al-mara'ah tashrib 'the woman drinks', an-nisaa' yashribna 'the women drink').


Note, in the second and third examples, how the verb agrees with the number of the noun even when the noun doesn't explicitly reflect the number distinction.



Adverbs

True adverbs in the grammatical sense are far rarer in Luganda than in, say, English, being mostly translated by other parts of speech—for example adjectives or particles.
When the adverb is qualifying a verb, it's usually translated by an adjective, which then agrees with the subject of the verb. For example:
Here, 'badly' is translated with the adjective -bba 'bad, ugly', which is declined to agree with the subject—changing its prefix to mu- when the subject is singular or ba when it's plural.


Other concepts can be translated by invariant particles. for example the intensifying particle nnyo is attached to an adjective or verb to mean 'very', 'a lot'. For example: Lukwago anywa nnyo 'Lukwago drinks a lot'.


There are also two groups of true adverb in Luganda, both of which agree with the verbal subject or qualified noun (not just in gender and number but also in person), but which are inflected differently. The first group is conjugated in the same way as verbs and contains only a few words: tya 'how', ti 'like this', tyo 'like that':

The adverb ti 'like this' (the last word in each of the above sentences) is conjugated as a verb to agree with the subject of the sentence in gender, number and person.


The second group takes a different set of prefixes, based on the pronouns. Adverbs in this group inclusde -nna 'all', -kka 'only', -mbi, -mbiriri 'both' and -nsatule 'all three':

Note how, in the last two examples, the adverb -kka agrees with whichever antecedent it's qualifying—either the implicit nze 'I' or the explicit emmotoka 'the car'.



Possessive

The possessive in Luganda is indicated with a different particle for each singular and plural noun class (according to the possessed noun). An alternative way of thinking about the Luganda possessive is as a single word whose initial consonant cluster is altered to agree with the possessed noun in class and number.


Depending on the possessed noun, the possessive takes one of the following forms:


If the possessor is a personal pronoun, the separate possessive form is not used. Instead, the following personal possessives are used:

Compare these to the French possessive adjectives:

There are also a few nouns that take special forms when used with a possessive:


References



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