Languages of Uganda
Uganda is ethnologically diverse, with at least forty languages in usage.
Luganda is the most common language. English is the official language of Uganda, even though only a relatively small proportion of the population speaks it. Access to economic and political power is almost impossible without having mastered that language. The East African lingua franca
Swahili is relatively widespread as a trade language and was made an official national language of Uganda in September
2005. Luganda, a language widespread in central Uganda, has been the official vernacular language in education for central Uganda for a long time.
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Map showing the approximate distribution of language families and languages in Uganda. |
A main division between the languages of Uganda can be made according to their linguistic affiliation. About half of Uganda's languages, all spoken in the southern part, are members of the
Bantu language family whereas the other half, in northern Uganda, are of
Nilo-Saharan stock. In Central-western Uganda this division coincides with the
Victoria Nile flowing from
Lake Kyoga to
Lake Albert. In Central-eastern Uganda there is a Bantu 'bulge' east of the Victoria Nile in otherwise Nilotic territory formed by
Lusoga, its close relatives Kenyi and Gwere, and even further eastward the three closely related languages
Luhya, Masaba and Nyole. Among the Nilo-Saharan languages of the north, a division can be made between the Central Sudanic languages in the extreme north-west and the Nilotic languages in other parts of the north, two branches of Nilo-Saharan that are only very distantly related.
A tale of a linguistic misunderstanding on a bus between
Kampala and
Jinja in 1988 is recounted in a paper published in 1991:
A dispute ensued over payment of the fare between the bus conductor, who was speaking only Luganda, and a passenger who apparently did not understand that language. The incensed conductor finally pushed the passenger out of the bus shouting: "Fuluma, tulabye n'Abacholi!" (Get out, we are suffering with the Acholi!). The passenger was equally infuriated. He hired a taxi to the next police station to file a case against the "tribalistic bus conductor". The bus journey came to an end at the police station as the conductor was escorted to a cell to await the charges.The above anecdote, while superficially amusing, serves to highlight social difficulties reinforced by language barriers. Uganda is a country with a history of rivalry and political disagreement. Language differences may have increased ethnic tensions and caused difficulty in forming a national identity.
Nineteen
Bantu languages are spoken in central and southern Uganda, the bulk of them of the
Nyoro-Ganda subfamily. Ganda is the largest in number of speakers, over three million. It is also widespread as a second language. Other relatively widespread Bantu languages include Nyankore (1,643,193), its close relative
Chiga (1,391,442), Soga (1,370,845),
Masaba (751,253),
Nyoro (the language of the ancient
Bunyoro kingdom, 495,443), Tooro (488,024), Kenyi (closely related to Soga, 390,115), Konjo (361,709), and Gwere, Nyole and Luyia (about 250,000 each).
Kinyarwanda is spoken by about 500,000 Ugandans, mainly in Kisoro district. There are also several smaller languages such as Amba, Gungu, Ruli, and Talinga-Bwisi (all less than 70,000 speakers). As a reflection of the arbitrarily drawn borders during the
Scramble for Africa, many languages along the border of Uganda, especially the smaller Bantu languages in the Uganda-Congo borderland, extend into neighbouring countries.
In most of the Bantu speaking areas of Uganda,
dialect continua are very common. For example, people around Mbarara in Ankole District speak
Runyankore and people from Fort Portal in Toro District speak
Rutooro — but in the area between those towns one will find villages where most of the people speak a dialect which is best characterized as intermediate between Runyankore and Rutooro.
Of Nilo-Saharan, the
Eastern Sudanic branch is well represented by several Nilotic languages,
eastern as well as
western. Eastern Nilotic languages include Karamojong of Eastern Uganda (370,000), the Bari languages in the extreme northwestern corner (about 150,000), and Teso south of Lake Kyoga (999,537). Alur (459,000),
Acholi,
Lango, Adhola and Kumam of eastern Uganda are Western Nilotic
Luo languages. Some southern Nilotic Kalenjin languages are spoken along the border with
Kenya, including
Pokot and the
Elgon languages near Kupsabiny. The eastern Ugandan
Kuliak languages Ik and Soo are also members of the Eastern Sudanic branch. Lugbara, Aringa, Ma'di and Ndo of northeastern Uganda are languages of the
Central Sudanic branch of Nilo-Saharan.
In Uganda, like in many African countries,
English, the language of the colonizing power, was introduced in government and public life by way of missionary work and the educational system. During the first decades of the twentieth century, Swahili gained influence as it was not only used in the army and the police, but was also taught in schools. The Baganda viewed the introduction of Swahili as a threat to their political power and partly through their influence, English remained the only official language at that time. Upon Uganda's independence in 1962, English was maintained as the official language, as it was already rooted deeply in administration, media, and education. Also, Uganda's ethnolinguistic diversity made it difficult to choose another language as the official language of Uganda.
After independence there were efforts to choose an indigenous official language, with Swahili and Luganda as the most considered candidates. Although Luganda was the most geographically spread language, people outside Buganda were opposed to having it as a national language, as were those of the Buganda kingdom because they felt other tribes' mispronunciation and grammar errors would ruin their language. English remained the official language [
1].
During the regime of
Idi Amin, Swahili, the East African
lingua franca, became the second official national language, but it lost its official and national status in the 1995 Constitution. In September
2005, the Ugandan Parliament voted to once again make Swahili the second official national language.
Notes
#
IPP (Tanzania) ,
Britannica# Mukama 1991# Mukama 1991# All population numbers are based on the
Ethnologue, 15th edition; many of them come from the 1991 census as cited therein.# Ladefoged et.al., 1972:28-30.
References
*Gordon, Raymond G., Jr. (ed.), 2005. Ethnologue: Languages of the World, Fifteenth edition. Dallas, Tex.: SIL International. Online version: http://www.ethnologue.com/. More specifically
Ethnologue report for Uganda, retrieved August 19, 2005.
* Ladefoged, Peter; Ruth Glick; Clive Criper; Clifford H. Prator; Livingstone Walusimbi (1972)
Language in Uganda (Ford Foundation language surveys vol. 1). London/New York etc. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-436101-2
* Parry, Kate (ed.) (2000)
Language and literacy in Uganda: towards a sustainable reading culture. Kampala: Fountain Publishers.
*Mukama, Ruth G. (1991) 'Recent developments in the language situation and prospects for the future', pp. 334-350 in
Changing Uganda, eds. Holger Bernt Hansen & Michael Twaddle, Fountain Publishers, 1991, ISBN 9970021583
