Ganda

Ganda or Luganda ( loo-GAN-də; Oluganda [oluɡâːndá]) is a Bantu language spoken in the African Great Lakes region. It is one of the major languages in Uganda and is spoken by more than 5.56 million Baganda and other people principally in central Uganda, including the country's capital, Kampala. Typologically, it is an agglutinative, tonal language with subject–verb–object word order and nominative–accusative morphosyntactic alignment. With at least 5.6 million first-language speakers in the Buganda region and 5.4 million second language speakers fluent elsewhere in different regions especially in major urban areas like Mbale, Tororo, Jinja, Gulu, Mbarara, Hoima, Kasese etc. Luganda is Uganda's de facto language of national identity as it is the most widely spoken Ugandan language used mostly in trade in urban areas. The language is also the most-spoken unofficial language in Rwanda's capital Kigali. As a second language, it follows English and precedes Swahili in Uganda. Lusoga, the language spoken in Busoga to the east of Buganda, is very closely related to Luganda. The two languages are almost mutually intelligible, and have an estimated lexical similarity of between 82% and 86%.

Sub-Saharan Africa

Present-day use

The captured source does not contain a separate current-use account.

Origins

The captured article does not contain a separate origins section. See the historical account and linked source.

Development

Luganda, a Bantu language, shares its roots with other Bantu languages spoken in the African Great Lakes region. Its specific origins remain a subject of scholarly debate, but it's generally accepted that it evolved from Proto-Bantu, the ancestral language of all Bantu languages. During the 18th -19th century, due to interaction with foreign communities, Luganda borrowed a number of loan words from the incoming peoples (Arab traders, missionaries and colonialists), mostly for things that were inexistent in the land, such as a number of words from Arabic like chai from Arabic shay (tea), ddiini (religion), ssala (prayer), and from English, for example ssaati (shirt) or emotoka (car).

Writing

Luganda spelling, which has been standardized since 1947, uses a Latin alphabet, augmented with one new letter ŋ and a digraph ny, which is treated as a single letter. It has a very high sound-to-letter correspondence: one letter usually represents one sound and vice versa. The distinction between simple and geminate consonants is always represented explicitly: simple consonants are written single, and geminates are written double. The distinction between long and short vowels is always made clear from the spelling but not always explicitly: short vowels are always written single; long vowels are written double only if their length cannot be inferred from the context. Stress and tones are not represented in the spelling. The following phonemes are always represented with the same letter or combination of letters: Short vowels (always spelt a, e, i, o, u) All consonants apart from /l~r/, /c/ and /ɟ/ The palatals /c/ and /ɟ/, when followed by a short vowel (always spelt c, j), except when the short vowel is itself followed by a geminate consonant, or when the vowel is /i/ The following phonemes can be represented with two letters or combinations of letters, with the alternation predictable from the context: Long vowels (spelt a, e, i, o, u where short vowels are impossible; aa, ee, ii, oo, uu elsewhere) The liquid /l~r/ (spelt r after e or i; l elsewhere) The following phonemes can be represented with two letters or combinations of letters, with unpredictable alternation between the two: The palatals /c/ and /ɟ/, when followed by a long vowel, or by a short vowel and a geminate consonant, or by an i sound (/i/ or /iː/) (spelt with c, j, with ky, gy, or, before i, with k, g). It is therefore possible to predict the pronunciation of any word (with the exception of stress and tones) from the spelling. It is also usually possible to predict the spelling of a word from the pronunciation.