Nkore language
Bantu language spoken by the Nkore and Hema peoples of Southwestern Uganda
Nkore (also called Nkole, Nyankore, Nyankole, Orunyankore, Orunyankole, Runyankore and Runyankole) is a Bantu language spoken by the Nkore ("Banyankore") of south-western Uganda in the former province of Ankole, as well as in Tanzania, the DR Congo, Rwanda and Burundi.
Runyankole is mainly spoken in the Mbarara, Bushenyi, Ntungamo, Kiruhura, Ibanda, Isingiro, Rukungiri, Buhweju, Mitooma, Rwampara, Sheema, Rubirizi, and parts of Kitagwenda districts.
There is a brief description and teaching guide for this language, written by Charles V. Taylor in the 1950s, and an adequate dictionary in print. Whilst this language is spoken by almost all the Ugandans in the region, most also speak English, especially in the towns. (English is one of Uganda's two official languages, and the language taught in schools.)
Nkore is so similar to Kiga (84–94 percent lexical similarity) that some argue they are dialects of the same language, a language called Nkore-Kiga by Taylor.
They use the same alphabet with minor orthographic differences (see Kiga).
Phonology
Runyankore has a five-vowel system:
Sounds /i, u/ can be heard as [ɪ, ʊ] when short or lax.
Basic greetings
The greeting Agandi, implying, "How are you?" but literally meaning "other news!", can be replied with Ni marungi, which literally means "good news!".
The proper greetings are Oraire ota? or Osiibire ota?, literally translated "How was your night?" and "How was your day?".
“Nkore language” enters the record as bantu language spoken by the Nkore and Hema peoples of Southwestern Uganda. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Nkore, language and Bantu can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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This entry incorporates text from “Nkore language” 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.