Acholi dialect

Acoli
Lwo
Native to Uganda, South Sudan
Ethnicity Acholi people
Native speakers
 1.2 million (2002 census)[1]
Nilo-Saharan?
Dialects
  • Labwor
  • Nyakwai
  • Dhopaluo (Chope)[2]
Language codes
ISO 639-2 ach
ISO 639-3 ach
Glottolog acol1236[3]

Acoli (also Acholi, Akoli, Acooli, Atscholi, Shuli, Gang, Lwoo, Lwo, Lok Acoli, Dok Acoli) is a Southern Luo dialect spoken by the Acholi people in the districts of Gulu, Kitgum and Pader (a region known as Acholiland) in northern Uganda. It is also spoken in southern Sudan in Magwi County Eastern Equatoria states

Song of Lawino, well known in African literature, was written in Acholi by Okot p'Bitek, although its sequel, Song of Ocol, was written in English.

Acoli, Alur, and Lango have between 84 and 90 per cent of their vocabulary in common and are mutually intelligible. However, they are often counted as separate languages because their speakers are ethnically distinct. Labwor (Thur), once considered a dialect of Acholi, may not be intelligible with it.[4]

Phonology

Acoli has vowel harmony: all vowels in a word have to belong to a single class (e.g. [kojo] the cold vs. [kɔjɔ] to separate). There are two sets of five vowels, distinguished by the feature [+/-ATR].

[-ATR] vowels in Luo
FrontCentralBack
Near-close ɪ ʊ
Open-mid ɛ ɔ
Open ɒ
[+ATR] vowels in Luo
FrontCentralBack
Close i u
Close-mid e o
Open a

Acoli is a tonal language. Thus, some words may be distinguished by tone alone, e.g. bèl (low) 'wrinkled' vs. bél (high) 'corn' and kàl (low) 'place enclosed by a palisade' vs. kál (high) 'millet'. Tone furthermore plays a role in verb conjugation.


The above were the old work of the missionaries Alfered Malandra and Crazzolara published in 1955. However, a more up-to-date Acoli orthography by Janet Lakareber shows that a vowel in Acoli language has more than two pronunciations.[5] A monosyllabic word in Acoli has 14 different pronunciations. This is explained in the nine books of Acoli Accented Orthography.

Notes and references

Notes

  1. ^ Heron, G.A., 1972, Introduction p.8 in p'Bitek, Okot, 1984.
  2. ^ Ladefoged et al., 1972:80.

References

  1. ↑ Acoli at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015)
  2. ↑
    Not to be confused with Chopi language (Bantu).
  3. ↑ Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin; Bank, Sebastian, eds. (2016). "Acoli". Glottolog 2.7. Jena: Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.
  4. ↑
  5. ↑ "Acoli Accented Orthography with diacritical marks". Retrieved 9 April 2013.

External links

Acholi dialect test of Wikipedia at Wikimedia Incubator
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