Acholi dialect
Southern Luo dialect
Acholi ( ə-CHOH-li, also Leb Acoli, or Leb Lwo) is a Southern Luo language spoken by the Acholi people in the districts of Gulu, Kitgum, Amuru, Lamwo, Agago, Nwoya, Omoro and Pader (a region known as Acholiland) in northern Uganda. The Dhopaluo (Chope) sub-dialect of Acholi is spoken in the Kiryandongo District in the kingdom of Bunyoro. It is also spoken in South Sudan in Magwi County, Eastern Equatoria.
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.[1]
Acholi, Alur, and Jo Padola have between 84 and 90 per cent of their vocabulary in common[2] 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.
Phonology
Acholi 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].
“Acholi dialect” enters the record as southern Luo dialect. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Acholi, dialect and Southern can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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This entry incorporates text from “Acholi dialect” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.