Luganda lessons

I believe there are 54 tribes in Uganda, and most have their own language.  Since UCU is in Central Uganda, that means that we are in the land of the Buganda, the dominant tribe of the country.  A member of the tribe of Buganda is called a Muganda, and they speak Luganda.  Got it?

I’ve been picking up some small Luganda phrases in my time here, so I can be polite.  I can greet and carry out very small conversation, but I want to be serious about learning Luganda.

The USPs have a Luganda class, but 1. it’s very expensive, and 2. the times don’t work with my schedule.  So I’ve hired a tutor from the languages department (at half the price!  Yay!), and we met for the first time last week.

Chrysostom, my tutor, began with the Luganda alphabet.  You’ll note that it’s remarkably similar to English, with some important differences.  

Let’s start with the vowels.  A is pronounced ah, E is pronounced ay, I is pronounced ee (long e), O and U are pronounced like you think.  The consonants are pronunced with an ah sound at the end:  so W is wah, Y is yah, etc.  You’ll notice that the R, J, and G are circled, because the R is pronounced ala, the J is pronounced jah, as in jar, and the G is pronounced gah, as in gas.  I fear that I will forever get confused.  I’ve ignored the last character on the second row because I don’t know it’s name, and it’s hard to tell you how to pronounce it, though it is a kind of “ng” sound, pronounced at the back of the throat.

The words at the bottom are words we had discussed, and the double letter means that there is a slight extension of the sound.  Jjangu means come; omusajja is man, and ggwe is you (which I had assumed had only one g; it’s a common way of calling someone, or calling someone out).  Weeraba is bye, but is pronounced way-lah-bah, because that R is pronounced with an “l.”  Sometimes I wonder what the missionaries who codified Luganda were thinking!