Ruuli language

Last updated
Ruuli
Luduuli
Native to Uganda
Ethnicity Baruuli
Native speakers
160,000 (2002 census) [1]
Dialects
  • Nyara
Language codes
ISO 639-3 ruc
Glottolog ruul1235
JE.103 [2]

Ruuli (also spelled as Ruruuli-Lunyala, Ruli, Luruuri-Lunyara, Ruruli-Lunyara, Ruruli-Runyala, and Luduuli) is the Bantu language spoken by the Baruuli and Banyala people of Uganda primarily in Nakasongola and Kayunga districts. It is closely to the Nyoro language

Contents

Ruruuli and Lunyala are two major varieties of the language that have approximately ninety percent mutual intelligibility. The Baruuli and Banyala people are considered to be two separate ethnic groups although both communities have very similar cultural practices, for example with names and the nomenclature systems. [3]

Phonology

Tone is very important in Ruuli as it is a tonal language. Different tones play a large part in making phonemes distinct when they are spoken. [3]

Consonants

There are 21 consonants in the Ruuli. [3]

Consonant Phonemes
Bilabial Labio-dental Alveolar Palatal Velar
Plosive /p/ /b/ /t/ /d/ /c/ /ɟ/ /k/ /g/
Fricative /β/ /f/ /v/ /s/ /z/
Trill /r/
Lateral /l/
Nasal /m/ /n/ /ɲ/ /ŋ/
Approximant /w/ /j/

Vowels

Ruuli uses five phonemic vowels and all five have a short and long form. The vowels in the Ruuli phonemic inventory are /i/, /u/, /e/, /o/, and /a/. [3]

Morphology

Nouns

Nouns in Bantu languages usually consist of a nominal prefix and a stem. The prefixes that are attached can be specific to the noun classes that a noun form is attached to, but not all nouns have prefixes that signal noun class. Noun class is ultimately decided by the prefixes on the verbs and adjectives in the clause. Typically Bantu nouns are paired in two class, singular and plural, which can also be referred to as gender, although this may not be the case for all nouns. [3]

Adjectives

In Bantu languages adjectives use adjectival prefixes to ensure that adjectives and nouns agree within a clause. Adjectives in Bantu languages are not usually "pure" adjectives and many are derived from verbs. There are a few underived adjectives but a majority of the adjectives in Ruuli are derived.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bemba language</span> Bantu language of northeastern Zambia

Bemba, ChiBemba, is a Bantu language spoken primarily in north-eastern Zambia by the Bemba people and as a lingua franca by about 18 related ethnic groups.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Supyire language</span> Language

Supyire, or Suppire, is a Senufo language spoken in the Sikasso Region of southeastern Mali and in adjoining regions of Ivory Coast. In their native language, the noun sùpyìré means both "the people" and "the language spoken by the people".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tunica language</span> Extinct language isolate of the Mississippi Valley

The Tunica or Luhchi Yoroni language is a language isolate that was spoken in the Central and Lower Mississippi Valley in the United States by Native American Tunica peoples. There are no native speakers of the Tunica language, but there were 32 second-language speakers in 2017, and as of 2023, there are 60 second-language speakers.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Warlpiri language</span> Aboriginal Australian language

The Warlpiri language is spoken by close to 3,000 of the Warlpiri people from the Tanami Desert, northwest of Alice Springs, Central Australia. It is one of the Ngarrkic languages of the large Pama–Nyungan family and is one of the largest Aboriginal languages in Australia in terms of number of speakers. One of the most well-known terms for The Dreaming, Jukurrpa, derives from Warlpiri.

Wintu is a Wintu language which was spoken by the Wintu people of Northern California. It was the northernmost member of the Wintun family of languages. The Wintun family of languages was spoken in the Shasta County, Trinity County, Sacramento River Valley and in adjacent areas up to the Carquinez Strait of San Francisco Bay. Wintun is a branch of the hypothetical Penutian language phylum or stock of languages of western North America, more closely related to four other families of Penutian languages spoken in California: Maiduan, Miwokan, Yokuts, and Costanoan.

The Manenguba languages, also known as the Mbo cluster, are a group of closely related Bantu languages spoken on and around the Manenguba mountain range in south-western Cameroon.

Sesotho nouns signify concrete or abstract concepts in the language, but are distinct from the Sesotho pronouns.

The phonology of Sesotho and those of the other Sotho–Tswana languages are radically different from those of "older" or more "stereotypical" Bantu languages. Modern Sesotho in particular has very mixed origins inheriting many words and idioms from non-Sotho–Tswana languages.

Just as the Sesotho sentence centres on the Sesotho noun, the noun is made to "concòrd" ("agree") with the verbs, pronouns, and qualificatives describing it by a set of Sesotho noun concords.

The Sesotho parts of speech convey the most basic meanings and functions of the words in the language, which may be modified in largely predictable ways by affixes and other regular morphological devices. Each complete word in the Sesotho language must comprise some "part of speech."

The Wuvulu-Aua language is an Austronesian language which is spoken on the Wuvulu and Aua Islands and in the Manus Province of Papua New Guinea.

This article presents a brief overview of the grammar of the Sesotho and provides links to more detailed articles.

Yao is a Bantu language in Africa with approximately two million speakers in Malawi, and half a million each in Tanzania and Mozambique. There are also some speakers in Zambia. In Malawi, the main dialect is Mangochi, mostly spoken around Lake Malawi. In Mozambique, the main dialects are Makale and Massaninga. The language has also gone by several other names in English, including chiYao or ciYao, Achawa, Adsawa, Adsoa, Ajawa, Ayawa, Ayo, Ayao, Djao, Haiao, Hiao, Hyao, Jao, Veiao, and waJao.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jarawa language (Andaman Islands)</span> Language of India

Järawa or Jarwa is one of the Ongan languages. It is spoken by the Jarawa people inhabiting the interior and south central Rutland Island, central interior, and south interior South Andaman Island, and the west coast of Middle Andaman Island.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jemez language</span> Tanoan language

Jemez is a Kiowa-Tanoan language spoken by the Jemez Pueblo people in New Mexico. It has no common written form, as tribal rules do not allow the language to be transcribed; linguists describing the language have used the Americanist phonetic notation with slight modifications.

Rangi or Langi is a Bantu language spoken by the Rangi people of Kondoa District in the Dodoma Region of Central Tanzania. Whilst the language is known as Rangi in English and Kirangi in the dominant Swahili spoken throughout the African Great Lakes, the self-referent term is Kilaangi.

Moro is a Kordofanian language spoken in the Nuba Mountains of South Kordofan, Sudan. It is part of the Western group of West Central Heiban Kordofonian languages and belongs to the Niger-Congo phylum. In 1982 there were an estimated 30,000 Moro-speakers. This was before the second Sudan civil war and therefore the recent number of speakers might differ. There can be noted an influence of Arabic and it is suspected that today approximately a fourth of all Moro vocabulary has a relation or an origin in the Arabic language.

Zulu grammar is the way in which meanings are encoded into wordings in the Zulu language. Zulu grammar is typical for Bantu languages, bearing all the hallmarks of this language family. These include agglutinativity, a rich array of noun classes, extensive inflection for person, tense and aspect, and a subject–verb–object word order.

Tommo So is a language spoken in the eastern part of Mali's Mopti Region. It is placed under the Dogon language family, a subfamily of the Niger-Congo language family.

Mungbam is a Southern Bantoid language of the Lower Fungom region of Cameroon. It is traditionally classified as a Western Beboid language, but the language family is disputed. Good et al. uses a more accurate name, the 'Yemne-Kimbi group,' but proposes the term 'Beboid.'

References

  1. Ruuli at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required)
  2. Jouni Filip Maho, 2009. New Updated Guthrie List Online
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 Namyalo S, Witzlack-Makarevich A, Kiriggwajjo A, Atuhairwe A, Molochieva Z, Mukama RG, Zellers M (2021). A dictionary and grammatical sketch of Ruruuli-Lunyala (pdf). Berlin: Language Science Press. doi: 10.5281/zenodo.5548947 . ISBN   978-3-96110-329-4.