7 Pearls Of Lugbara

Learning Lugbara can be easier if you grasp the following 7 Guidelines:

1. Every Lugbara word ends with a vowel eg nyanya = tomato; karoti = carrot; mucele = rice; ovakedo = avocado; osu = bean; mawa = flower; mbasala = onion...

2. Some words have two or more meanings depending on tone, pronunciation or context eg ti can mean mouth, language, cow, drip, etc. Singular and plural nouns are the same except mva [child] and anzi [children]. This implies that the old Lugbara has quite a small vocabulary though new words keep getting added in modern times...

3. Some words are repeated to create new ones eg kali kali = sweet; katri katri = straight; muni muni = soft...

4. The Lugbara alphabet has no Q nor X but there are four additional letters with an apostrophe before them. Without it, the sound can be indicated by H after each of them though not used much, that is: 'b = bh, 'd = dh, 'w = wh, 'y = yh eg 'bua = bhua [up], 'du = dhu [take], 'wara = whara [big], 'yo = yho [say]...

5. Adding the suffixes -ma, -nga, -ta and -za to a word or verb creates a noun eg age(y)itema = security; a'danga = act of pointing out; zota = growth, development; laza = reading. Many female given Lugbara names end with the suffix -ru meaning "like the word before" and are also adjectives eg Ayikoru = Like happiness (or simply "Happy"). Meanwhile, the word before can be used as a male-given name or noun...

6. Past tense sentences are structured as Subject-Verb-Object like in English eg A ngo ongo [I sang (a) song]; present and future tenses meanwhile are structured as S-O-V though nga [will] is added after the Subject to mark the difference eg Ma ongo ngo [I'm song singing] = I'm singing a song; Ma nga ongo ngo [I will song sing] = I will sing a song...

7. Pronunciation: Words that start with E may also be written with I while those that start with O might also start with U in different dialects like Terego, Aringa or Madi eg e'bi = i'bi [fish]; ori = uri [fear]. Arua Lugbara from Muni Village (Ayivu) is considered the Most Standard; Maracha is not so different but some Vurra dialects give me challenges. Pronunciation is very important in Lugbara and there are several special cases or diphthong clusters: mv = nv eg Mvara is pronounced Nvara; letter Z after N is pronounced J eg Inzikuru is pronounced Injikuru; C is always Ch like in Church eg Candiru = Chandiru; etc...

I was born in Jinja (1984) and grew up in KLA City (since 1995), so I learnt most of my first Lugbara vocabulary through my ears. It's after Y2K when I first travelled by Nile Coach to Arua that I started reading Lugbara Literature seriously. On Saturday 26th November 2016 (the 3rd Agofe's 90th birthday), I snapped and created an online "One Page Lugbara Dictionary", then drew a logo for Lugbara Translate (2019) in my quest to teach machines my mother tongue like Google Translate. The Lugbara ideas above are some of the valuable lessons I learnt along the way after inspiration from the super-amazing Cynthia Letasi who I met on Mt. Wati Road (around 2001-6)...