Saudah Namyalo, Alena Witzlack-Makarevich, Anatole Kiriggwajjo, Amos Atuhairwe, Zarina Molochieva, Ruth Mukama & Margaret Zellers, A *dictionary and grammatical sketch of Ruruuli-Lunyala*

Shigeki Kaji

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**Electronic version**

URL: https://journals.openedition.org/lla/2709

DOI: 10.4000/lla.2709

ISSN: 2822-7468

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**Electronic reference**

Shigeki Kaji, “Saudah Namyalo, Alena Witzlack-Makarevich, Anatole Kiriggwajjo, Amos Atuhairwe, Zarina Molochieva, Ruth Mukama & Margaret Zellers, *A dictionary and grammatical sketch of Ruruuli-Lunyala*”, *Linguistique et langues africaines* [Online], 8(2) | 2022, Online since 31 December 2022, connection on 18 July 2023. URL: http://journals.openedition.org/lla/2709; DOI: https://doi.org/10.4000/lla.2709

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Saudah Namyalo, Alena Witzlack-Makarevich, Anatole Kiriggwajjo, Amos Atuhairwe, Zarina Molochieva, Ruth Mukama & Margaret Zellers, *A dictionary and grammatical sketch of Ruruuli-Lunyala* (African Language Grammars and Dictionaries 5), Berlin, Language Science Press. 2021.

By Shigeki Kaji

Kyoto Sangyo University

It is a pleasure for a linguist to go through a dictionary of a language that he does not know but about which he is curious. This *Dictionary and grammatical sketch of Ruruuli-Lunyala* is one such publication to me. It is a bulky book of 778 pages with about 12,000 entries. It was compiled in collaboration of seven linguists, in Uganda, Germany and Israel, and published in 2021 as a volume of the series *African Language Grammars and Dictionaries* of Language Science Press.

Ruruuli-Lunyala is a Bantu language spoken in an elongated area stretching from West to East in the central part of the Republic of Uganda. It is a relatively small language in Uganda, with 190,122 ethnic Baruuli and 47,699 ethnic Banyala according to the Uganda Bureau of Statistics (2016: 71). It has been under the influences of three big kingdoms, namely Bunyoro in the West, Buganda in the centre and Busoga in the East. According to the authors, especially after the annexation of Buruuli and Bunyala to Buganda in the beginning of the 20th century, their language and culture was suppressed under Buganda regime. People were forced to speak Luganda (the language of the Baganda) and even punished if they spoke their own language. This situation continued until 1986 when the National Resistance Movement (NRM) government took power in Uganda and “opened space for all indigenous communities to promote and safeguard their languages and cultures” (p. vi). In this light, the publication of this dictionary is an important landmark for the rehabilitation of Ruruuli-Lunyala.

I use the term Ruruuli-Lunyala following the authors of the dictionary. However, it is not common to use a composite name for the dictionary of one language. The authors do not explain concretely what Ruruuli and Lunyala are and why they put these two together in one dictionary. They say that the Baruuli and Banyala are two ethnic groups, and that “[b]efore their annexation to Bunyoro Kingdom in the 15th c., Buruuli and Bunyala were independent chieftaincies” (p. 4). However, those two groups “share a common heritage” (p. 3), and according to the authors, “Vander Wal & Vander Wal (2005) report 90% mutual intelligibility between these two language varieties” (p. 4). After all, what we understand is that the variety spoken in Masindi district and Nakasongola district is called Ruruuli while the variety spoken in Kayunga district is called Lunyala if we follow Vander Wal & Vander Wal (2005) and Nakayiza (2013: 179). However, the authors write that the language has four varieties, namely that of Buyende district and that of Kiryandongo district in addition to the above-mentioned two. Unfortunately, no concrete examples are given.

In Uganda, two composite language names are well known, namely, Runyoro-Rutooro and Runyankore-Rukiga. Indeed, Runyoro and Rutooro are similar to each other. But the Banyoro and Batooro have their own kingdoms, and their languages are not the same. For example, with respect to tone, Runyoro has two tone patterns whereas Rutooro has only one; see (1). Also, Runyankore and Rukiga are not the same. See (2), in which palatalization and velarization are seen to work in Rukiga but not in Runyankore. The common orthographies veil these differences.

<table><thead><tr><th>(1)</th><th>Common orthography</th><th>Runyoro</th><th>Rutooro</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td></td><td><i>omuntu</i></td><td>[omû:ntu]</td><td>[omú:ntu] 'person'</td></tr><tr><td></td><td><i>omutwe</i></td><td>[omútwê]</td><td>[omútwe] 'head'</td></tr></tbody></table>
<table><thead><tr><th>(2)</th><th>Common orthography</th><th>Runyankore</th><th>Rukiga</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td></td><td><em>emyenda</em></td><td>[emyê:nda]</td><td>[ejê:nda]</td><td>'clothes'</td></tr><tr><td></td><td><em>embwa</em></td><td>[émbwa]</td><td>[émga]</td><td>'dog'</td></tr></tbody></table>

I believe that one must first describe each of the varieties and then combine them if necessary. As is emphasized elsewhere (e.g. in Kaji 2004; 2023), elucidating minute features of languages is for the purpose of preserving and giving testimony of the linguistic and cultural heritage. The differences between languages embody their history and give us precious data to reconstruct this history and, eventually, the history of the people who speak them.

The orthography of Ruruuli-Lunyala is still under development. One remark should be made here about a problematic writing convention adopted by the authors. The letter *bb* /b/ [b] is often used in orthographies of Ugandan languages to distinguish it from *b* /β/ [β]. The Ruruuli-Lunyala orthography adopts this practice. This is a good solution when the language does not have geminate consonants. In Ruruuli-Lunyala, however, geminate consonants exist in a small number of words, as in (3a) and (3b). As the authors use two letters, *nn*, *tt*, etc., to represent geminate consonants, the reader might, mistakenly, take *bb* for a geminate consonant.

(3) a. p. 29, ex. 39b *annenere* 1SBJ-1SG.OBJ-bite-PFV: /a-n-nen-ire/ [an:enere] ‘he/[she] has bitten me’

b. p. 12, ex. 6a *butto* /βut:o/ [but:o] ‘cooking oil, vegetable oil’ (from Luganda)

Another point noticed about the orthography is that the Ruruuli-Lunyala dictionary does not indicate tone marking on entry words, even though they explain in §2.4 (p. 15) that “tone is contrastive, i.e. it plays a role in distinguishing lexical items”. Tone marking is not necessary for native speakers but indispensable for non-native speakers. The lack of tone marking is a pity all the more because there is a specialist of tone among the authors. It is hoped that a second version of this dictionary will mark tone on all words contained in the dictionary.

In passing, the authors say that “[t]he tone bearing unit is the mora” (p. 15). This is not correct because they admit diphthongs like (4a), where the dot indicates the syllable boundary. If the mora is the tone bearing unit, the boundary should be like in (4b). I suppose that in Ruruuli-Lunyala, too, the tone bearing unit is the syllable like in neighbouring languages such as Runyoro. This might become clear when they proceed with their tonological analysis.

(4) a. p. 14, ex. 9 *omusaiza* /omusaiza/ [o.mu.sai.za] ‘man’

b. p. 14, ex. 9 *omusaiza* /omusaiza/ [o.mu.sa.i.za] ‘man’

A useful and fairly detailed grammatical description of Ruruuli-Lunyala is provided in part I of the book (p. 1-130), but, for reasons of space, we cannot elaborate on it. In what follows, we will showcase the structure of the dictionary.

Regarding the form of the entries, of which there are about 12,000 (p. vi), the authors state that “[b]y convention, all dictionary entries are entered as roots or stems” (p. 131). However, we know that a number of dictionaries of Bantu languages of Uganda use the whole word (i.e. augment-nominal prefix-stem) as an entry (see, for example, Makerere University 2007 about Runyanko-re-Rukiga). This Ruruuli-Lunyala dictionary does not observe this latter principle. It uses stems or words depending on word class. For verbs and adjectives, for example, stems are used as entries, e.g. (5a) for verbs and (5b) for an adjective.
(5) a. p. 628 **nokoka** (*oku*)**nokoka** vintr. **nokokere** to fall down from a tree • **Omuyembe** gunokokere ni gugwa ansi. A mango fell from the mango tree.
**nokola** (*oku*)**nokola** v.tr. **nokoire** to pick, to harvest, to gather • Iza tunokole omwani. Come and let's pick coffee.

b. p. 142 **andi** (e.g. kyandi, byadi, mwandi) adj. (a) fearsome, fierce, aggressive • **Ontale** kisolo kyandi muno. A lion is a very fierce animal. (b) cruel, brutal • **Omusaiza** oni mwandi. This man is cruel.

For nouns, the independent word form consisting of nominal prefix plus stem (without an augment)
is used for entries, as in (6a) and (6b).

(6) a. p. 422 **kyanda** (*e*)**kyanda** n.7/8 dry season, drought, dry spell • **Ekyanda kitandikire**.
The drought has started.

b. p. 507 **mbogo** (*o*)**mbogo** n.1a/10 buffalo • **Ombogo abba kisolo ky'amaani**. The buffal-
lo is a strong animal.

For adverbs, independent pronouns and ideophones, too, the independent word form is used, e.g. (7a)
for an adverb, (7b) and (7c) for independent pronouns, and (7d) for an ideophone.

(7) a. p. 191 **buyaaka** adv. again, anew • *Emotoka yaamwe agiirye buyaaka*. His car has been refurbished.

b. p. 619 **nje** pro. I, me (first person singular independent pronoun) • **Nje ndi Muganda** wa Masaka. I am a Muganda from Masaka.

c. p. 447 **kyo** pro. it (noun class 7 independent pronoun).

d. p. 262 **ggu** ideo. with a hard knock of a head • **Abandire omwomo be ggu**. He hit the wall very hard.

In conclusion, we need to pay reverence to the persevering and minute work the authors did to com-
pile this dictionary. To my knowledge, this is the first dictionary published about the language. It will
serve as a precious tool not only to non-native speakers and researchers but also to native speakers,
and it will help revitalize this rich language, which was reduced to the status of a “home language”
(p. vi). This dictionary would be more user-friendly if it had an English index, but that’s possibly too
much to ask for at present.

REFERENCES

Kaji, Shigeki. 2004. *A Runyankore vocabulary*. Tokyo: Research Institute for Languages and Cultures of Asia and Africa, Tokyo University of Foreign Studies.

Kaji, Shigeki. 2023. *A Rukiga vocabulary*. Kyoto: Shoukadoh for the Center for Language Studies, Kyoto Sangyo University.

Makerere University. 2007. *Kashoboorozi y'Orunyankore-Rukiga*. Kampala: Fountain Publishers.

Nakayiza, Judith. 2013. *The sociolinguistics of multilingualism in Uganda: A case study of the official and non-official language policy, planning and management of Luruuri-Lunyara and Luganda*. London: School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London (PhD dissertation).

Uganda Bureau of Statistics. 2016. *National population and housing census 2014 - main report*. Kampala.

Vander Wal, John & Trista Vander Wal. 2005. *Luruuri-Runyara language assessment report*. Kampala: SIL International.
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