In Twenty10, I woke up one sunny Saturday morning, dressed in my kitenge shirt like a Congolese and sneaked out of Uganda without telling anyone. Inside Ariwara Market where I drank millet porridge for breakfast, I was amazed to notice that the music playing loudest was neither English nor Lingala (Congolese) but Lugbara. At a certain point in available documentation, there were more Lugbara in Congo than Uganda; out of 13 Lugbara clans, about only six were in UG.
Lugbaraland connects three countries and was originally the capital of Lado Enclave meaning "(My ancestors [are]) resting here"...
22 Lugbara Tips (Compiled by Aiko)
1. The Simplified Lugbara Alphabet has 28 letters minus Q and X, but adds four consonants with an apostrophe to represent the sound H namely: 'B, 'D, 'W and 'Y eg 'ba (or bha) [person]; 'dia (or dhia) [here]; 'wi (or whi) [dry]; 'yeta (or yheta) [action]...
2. Every Lugbara word ends with a vowel eg mbasala [onion]; o'du [leopard]...
3. Adding the suffix -ru [name or as sth] to a noun turns it into an adjective which can be used as a female-given name eg Ayikoru [Happy]; Chandiru [Sorrowful]; Munduru [Like a White person]...
4. Nouns are used as male-given names eg Ari [Blood]; Ayiko [Happiness]; Chandi [Sorrow]; Dra [Death]...
5. Adding the suffix -a to a noun or name of place means "(located) in that thing" eg aru-a means "in prison" and can also be used as a male-given name...
6. Lugbara words are written as pronounced eg mutuka(ri) or motoka [(motor)car]. Spelling is covered by that rule...
7. Most singulars and regular plurals are the same eg mba alu [one month]/ mba aziri [seven months] though adding (e)yi after the subject denotes many eg opi yi [chiefs]. Exceptions include mva [child] which becomes anzi [children] and others which change tone eg agupi [man] becomes agupi [men] like having a pause between agu and pi...
8. Repeating some words creates compound words (usually adjectives) eg kalikali [sweet]...
9. Sentence structure in the present tense is Subject + Object + Verb (SOV) unlike SVO in English which is past tense in Lugbara eg Ma MUNGU inzi [I'm worshipping GOD] v Ma inzi MUNGU [I worshipped GOD]...
10. The ancient original Lugbara vocabulary had few words, but because of globalisation, new words were borrowed from other cultures eg simu [phone]...
11. Most numbers after 10 are phrases made by adding dri ni before the last digit eg 11 = mudri drini alu. Multiples of ten are kali then number of items eg 20 = kali iri; multiples of 100 are turu eg 300 = turu na; multiples of 1,000 are alifu eg 5,000 = alifu towi; multiples of 1,000,000 are milioni eg 6M = Milioni azia. Same applies for 1,000,000,000 [Bilioni] and so on. Therefore, the number 411 will be: Turu su mudri drini alu...
12. Some words have more than one meaning depending on three major tones (low, middle or high) eg ti can mean produce, drip or cow, etc...
13. The letter C is always pronounced Ch like in Church eg cu(u) [market] is pronounced chew...
14. In diphthong clusters such as DJ, GB and KP, the first letter remains silent eg odji [wash] is pronounced oji; Lugbara is pronounced Lubara; okpo [power] is pronounced opo...
15. MV is pronounced NV eg mvu [drink] is pronounced nvu; omve [call] is pronounced onve...
16. NZ is pronounced NJ eg Inzikuru [Disrespectful] is pronounced Injikuru; onzi [bad] is pronounced onji..
17. Adding the suffixes -ka, -ma, -nga, -ta or -za (like in Luganda) to a verb creates a noun eg nyaka [eatable or edible]/ azakoma [help]/ a'danga [insult]/ oguta [laughter]/ laza [reading]...
18. Personal names are capitalised at the beginning and written without marks like apostrophes nor dashes but the intended meaning remains eg Atabua comes from the phrase Ata 'bu-a [Father in heaven]; Bayo comes from 'Ba yo [No people (family nor relatives)]...
19. Idioms and proverbs teach Lugbara wisdom eg Odru fu Anira ni [The buffalo killed the man who thought he knew everything]...
20. Repeating a vowel at the end of some words may be redundant unless you mean something else eg letaa means "in love" and not just "love" which is simply leta; andrii redefines "the mother" but can just be andri; ocoo can be written as oco [dog] since oco o also means "the dog did"...
21. Madi, Lugbara and Aringa (considered Low Lugbara) are mutually intelligible languages because they share names, numbers and many words. According to oral history, the Madi originated from Nigeria and moved eastwards to the River Nile basin. A certain woman lost her lugba [desert dates] which she had folded somewhere and caused a group to break away at Rajaf, near Juba; the Madi called them "Lugba ni" while Khartoum slave traders named them Lugbara and they settled in Lado [(My ancestors are) resting here] which covers West Nile, Northeastern DR Congo and South sudan. Personally, Madi sounded like broken Lugbara the first time I heard it in Kampala while Aringa is like Patois or Pidgin Lugbara adding "(n)ga" or "go" to some words eg ADRO becomes ADRONGA [GOD, the Creator]/ ambo becomes ambogo [big]; interchanging letter E with I or O with U or Y with J in some words eg etu becomes itu [sun]/ ori becomes uri [snake]/ e'yo becomes ijo [issue]; etc. According to a 2011 Here Is Life Orthography, Aringati uses 26 consonants and 9 vowels...
22. The Lugbarati Language Board developed 45 Lugbara letters (7 vowels and 38 consonants) in a December 2013 Orthography Guide with tone-indicating diacritic vowel marks (accents like in French and lines) plus other rules, but if the symbols look too crowded to write, then just use a Simplified Lugbara Dictionary or Wordbook based on Arua Lugbara! The only thing that should bother you is the apostrophe sounds which can be learnt by hearing speech or music. For the rest of the romanisation like in Tip 6, what you see is what you get...
(CC) AikoGraphics, Illustrated
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