Luo dialect

Not to be confused with Luo languages, Luwo language, or Luo language (Cameroon).

Luo
Dholuo
Native to	Kenya, Tanzania
Region	East of Lake Victoria in Western Kenya and Northern Tanzania
Ethnicity	Luo
Native speakers	4.2 million (2009 census)
Language family	Nilo-Saharan? Eastern Sudanic Nilotic Western Nilotic Luo Southern Luo Luo–Acholi Luo- Lango Luo
Language codes
ISO 639-2	luo
ISO 639-3	luo
Glottolog	luok1236

The Luo dialect, Dholuo (pronounced [d̪ólúô]) or Nilotic Kavirondo (pejorative Colonial term), is the eponymous dialect of the Luo group of Nilotic languages, spoken by about 6 million Luo people of Kenya and Tanzania, who occupy parts of the eastern shore of Lake Victoria and areas to the south. It is used for broadcasts on KBC (Kenya Broadcasting Corporation, formerly the Voice of Kenya), Radio Ramogi, Radio Lake Victoria, Radio Lolwe, Radio Osienala as well as newspapers such as Otit Mach, Nam Dar etc. Dholuo is heavily used online in specially dedicated sites as well as in social media.

Dholuo is mutually intelligible with Alur, Lango, Acholi and Adhola of Uganda. Dholuo and the aforementioned Uganda languages are all linguistically related to Luwo, Nuer, Bari, Jur chol of Sudan and Anuak of Ethiopia due to common ethnic origins of the larger Luo peoples who speak Luo languages.

It is estimated that Dholuo has 90% lexical similarity with Lep Alur (Alur), 83% with Lep Achol (Acholi), 81% with Lango, and 93% with Dhopadhola (Adhola). However, these are often counted as separate languages despite common ethnic origins due to linguistic shift occasioned by geographical movement.

Literacy

Contains the area in which the Seventh-day Adventist British East Africa Mission worked. Rusinga Island and the town of Kisii are marked.

The foundations of the Dholuo written language and today's vibrant Dholuo literary tradition, as well as the modernization of the Jaluo people in Kenya begins in 1907 with the arrival of a Canadian-born Seventh-day Adventist missionary Arthur Asa Grandville Carscallen, whose missionary work over a period of about 14 years along the eastern shores of Lake Victoria left an enormous legacy. This legacy continues today through the Obama family of Kenya and the Seventh-day Adventist Church to which the Obamas and many other Jaluo converted in the early part of the 20th century as residents of the region that Carscallen was sent to proselytize. On a global scale, the Obamas of Kenya are direct relatives of Barack Obama, president of the United States.

From 1906-1921, Carscallen was superintendent of the Seventh-day Adventist Church's British East Africa Mission, and was charged with establishing missionary stations in eastern Kenya near Lake Victoria and proselytizing among the local population. These stations would include Gendia, Wire Hill, Rusinga Island, Kanyadoto, Karung, Kisii (Nyanchwa), and Kamagambo. In 1913, he acquired a small press for the Mission and set up a small printing operation at Gendia in order to publish church materials, but also used it to impact education and literacy in the region.

Over a period of about five years administering to largely Jaluo congregations, Carscallen achieved a mastery of the Dholuo language and is credited with being the first to reduce the language to writing, publishing the Elementary grammar of the Nilotic-Kavirondo language (Dhö Lwo), together with some useful phrases, English-Kavirondo and Kavirondo-English vocabulary, and some exercises with key to the same in 1910. Then, just a little more than two years later, the mission translated portions of the New Testament from English to Dholuo, which were later published by the British and Foreign Bible Society.

The grammar textbook Carscallen produced was widely used for many years throughout eastern Kenya, but his authorship of it is largely forgotten. It was later retitled, Dho-Luo for Beginners, and republished in 1936. In addition to the grammar text, Carscallen compiled an extensive dictionary of "Kavirondo" (Dholuo) and English, which is housed at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, UK. Neither of these works has been superseded, only updated, with new revised versions of the linguistic foundation that Carscallen established in 1910.

Phonology

Vowels

Dholuo has two sets of five vowels, distinguished by the feature [+/-ATR].

[-ATR] vowels in Dholuo

	Front	Central	Back
Near-close	ɪ		ʊ
Mid	ɛ		ɔ
Open		ɐ

[+ATR] vowels in Dholuo

	Front	Central	Back
Close	i		u
Mid	e		o
Open		a

Consonants

In the table of consonants below, orthographic symbols are included between parentheses if they differ from the IPA symbols. Note especially the following: the use of "y" for /j/, common in African orthographies; "th", "dh" are plosives, not fricatives as in Swahili spelling (but phoneme /d̪/ can fricativize intervocalically).

Phonetic inventory of consonants in Dholuo

		Labial	Dental	Alveolar	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Nasal		m		n	ɲ (ny)	ŋ (ng')
Plosive	prenasalized	ᵐb (mb)		ⁿd (nd)	ᶮɟ (nj)	ᵑɡ (ng)
	voiceless	p	t̪ (th)	t	c (ch)	k
	voiced	b	d̪ (dh)	d	ɟ (j)	ɡ
Fricative		f		s			h
Trill				r
Approximant		w		l	j (y)

Phonological characteristics

Dholuo is a tonal language. There is both lexical tone and grammatical tone, e.g. in the formation of passive verbs. It has vowel harmony by ATR status: the vowels in a noncompound word must be either all [+ATR] or all [-ATR]. The ATR-harmony requirement extends to the semivowels /w/, /ɥ/. Vowel length is contrastive.

Grammar

Dholuo is notable for its complicated phonological alternations, which are used, among other things, in distinguishing inalienable possession from alienable. The first example is a case of alienable possession, as the bone is not part of the dog.

chogo guok

bone dog

'the dog's bone' (which it is eating)

The following is however an example of inalienable possession, the bone being part of the cow:

chok dhiang'

bone (construct state) cow

'a cow bone'

Sample phrases

English	Luo
hello	misawa
How are you?	Idhi nade?
I'm fine.	Adhi maber.
What is your name?	Nyingi ng'a?
My name is…	Nyinga en…
I am happy to see you.	Amor neni.
Where do you come from?	In jakanye?
good morning	oyawore
good afternoon	oimore
God bless you.	Nyasaye ogwedhi.
good job	tich maber
goodbye	oriti
I want water.	Adwaro pi.
I am thirsty.	Riyo deya. / Riyo maka. / Riyo oinga.
thank you	erokamano
child	nyathi
student (university student)	nyathi skul, japwonjre (ja mbalariany)
come	bi
go	dhi
take	kawo
return	dwok
come back	dwogi
sit	bedi
stand / stop	chung' malo / wee
hunger	kech
I am starved.	Kech kaya.
father	wuor [Dinka] wur
mother	min [Dinka] mor mer
God	Nyasaye
Lord (God)	Ruoth (Nyasaye)
God is good	Nyasaye Ber
help	konya [Dinka] ba kony
man	dichuo
woman	dhako
boy	wuoyi
girl	nyako [Dinka] nya
book	buk, [Alego/Seme] buge
youth	rawera
pen	kalam
shorts	siruari
trousers	long' siruach
table	mesa
plate	san
lock	rarind, ralor
leader	jatelo
bring	kel
Go back there.	Dwog kucha.
Come back here.	Dwog ka.
ask / query	penj
question	penjo
run	ring [Dinka]
walk	wuothi
jump	dum / chikri [Alego/Seme]
rain	koth
sun	chieng'
moon	duwe / duee
stars	sulwe
fish	rech [Dinka]
cold	koyo
I want to eat.	Adwaro chiemo.
grandfather	kwaro [Dinka] / kwar
grandmother	dayo [Dinka] / day
white man	ja rachar
cow	dhiang'
sing	wer [Dinka]
song	wero
good, beautiful	ber, jaber
bad	rach
marriage	arus from Harusi Swahili for marriage kend [Dinka], "keny" is the process, "thiek" is the marriage
marry	kend
tomorrow	kiny
today	kawuono
here	ka / kae
there (close by)	kacha / kocha
there (far)	kucho
child	nyathi
money	omenda / chung' / oboke / sendi / pesa
gun	bunde
gun fire	mach bunde
fire	mach
I want ugali.	Adwaro kwon.
maize, corn	oduma, bando
maize and beans	nyoyo
taxi	matatu (Swahili)
farm	puodho (Alego-Ndalo)
dig	puro / kunyo
fly (in the air)	fuyo
fly (insect)	lwang'ni
stream (river)	aora
lake	nam
ocean	ataro

Bibliography

• Gregersen, E. (1961). Luo: A grammar. Dissertation: Yale University.
• Stafford, R. L. (1965). An elementary Luo grammar with vocabularies. Nairobi: Oxford University Press.
• Omondi, Lucia Ndong'a (1982). The major syntactic structures of Dholuo. Berlin: Dietrich Reimer.
• Tucker, A. N. (ed. by Chet A. Creider) (1994). A grammar of Kenya Luo (Dholuo). 2 vols. Köln: Rüdiger Köppe Verlag.
• Okoth Okombo, D. (1997). A Functional Grammar of Dholuo. Köln: Rüdiger Köppe Verlag.
• Odaga, Asenath Bole (1997). English-Dholuo dictionary. Lake Publishers & Enterprises, Kisumu. ISBN 9966-48-781-6.
• Odhiambo, Reenish Acieng' and Aagard-Hansen, Jens (1998). Dholuo course book. Nairobi.

External links

• Luo phrases and basics
• Practical guide for learning Luo
• A Handbook of the Kavirondo Language (1920) - one of the earliest books on Dholuo