Luganda

Ganda
Oluganda
Native toUganda
RegionBuganda
EthnicityBaganda
SpeakersL1: 5.6 million (2014)[1]
L2: 5.4 million (2014)[1]
Early form
early-Luganda[2]
Dialects
  • Ludiope
  • Luvuma
  • Sese
Latin script (Ganda alphabet)
Ganda Braille
Language codes
ISO 639-1lg
ISO 639-2lug
ISO 639-3lug
Glottologgand1255
JE.15[3]
This article contains IPA phonetic symbols. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Unicode characters. For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA.
Ganda
PersonOmuGanda
PeopleAbaGanda
LanguageOluGanda
CountryBuGanda

Ganda or Luganda[4] (/lˈɡændə/ loo-GAN-də;[5] Oluganda [oluɡâːndá])[6] 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[7] 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[8] 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.[9] 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,[10] and have an estimated lexical similarity of between 82% and 86%.[11]

  1. ^ a b Ganda at Ethnologue (25th ed., 2022) Closed access icon
  2. ^ Stephens, Rhiannon (2 September 2013). A History of African Motherhood: The Case of Uganda, 700-1900. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9781107030800.
  3. ^ Jouni Filip Maho, 2009. New Updated Guthrie List Online
  4. ^ "Ganda". Oxford English Dictionary (Online ed.). Oxford University Press. (Subscription or participating institution membership required.)
  5. ^ Laurie Bauer, 2007, The Linguistics Student’s Handbook, Edinburgh
  6. ^ Luganda Basic Course, p.144.
  7. ^ Uganda Bureau of Statistics. "National Population and Housing Census 2014 - Main Report" (PDF).
  8. ^ "20 million people can speak Luganda - linguists".
  9. ^ Sam Ruburika (1 April 2009). "Rwanda: Country's Unofficial Second Language - Luganda". Focus Media. Kigali. Retrieved 25 August 2022 – via AllAfrica.
  10. ^ Hyman, Larry (2020-09-15). "In search of prosodic domains in Lusoga". Syntactic architecture and its consequences I: Syntax inside the grammar (1st ed.). Berlin: Language Science Press. pp. 253–276. doi:10.5281/zenodo.4041229. ISBN 978-3-96110-275-4.
  11. ^ Nabirye, Minah; Schryver, Gilles-Maurice de; Verhoeven, Jo (August 2016). "Lusoga (Lutenga)". Journal of the International Phonetic Association. 46 (2): 219–228. doi:10.1017/S0025100315000249. hdl:10067/1344810151162165141. ISSN 0025-1003.