Maadera has truly educated. Besides, Language grows with its continual use.
Those who find Lugbara confusing only have challenges with intonations
as they pronounce the words, which with time is sorted with time.
Learning any language requires patience and every human being is
equipped with "language learning device" (LAD), which enables him or her to
learn any language. The bottom line is patience. The mistakes and
frustrations are part of the learning process. My son over generalized
past tense of ever word by simply adding "ed" at the end and asserted "I eated
all my food instead of I
ate all my food", but this did not discourage him. Am sure he is one of
the best English speakers in his class, going by the reports I get.
In conclusion, Lugbara is not any different from any other language as far as
learning it is confirmed. Those of you who like me grew up in Mvara
remember Mr. and Mrs Mc Leo (not sure of spelling of the name) the
missionaries based at Emmanuel Cathedral till 1980s spoke very good
Lugbara and even preached in Lugbara. All the best for trying to learn
our wonderful language. Awadifo.
________________________________
From: Asaf Adebua <[email protected]>
To: A Virtual Network for friends of West Nile <[email protected]>
Sent: Saturday, 27 April 2013, 9:56
Subject: Re: [WestNileNet] Learning the Lugbara Language - A bloggers 2 cents-a
good read!
A VERY LONG TICK TO YOU MAANDERA1
On 4/26/13, Maandera <[email protected]> wrote:
> Hmmm. Before reading this article, I had read another blog about 4 years
> ago of an American also living in Arua and struggling to learn Lugbara.
> That one was less dramatic than this one. But I'd also heard of people
> saying Lugbara is a difficult language to learn. This had actually gotten
> me thinking: Can't you try to make learning Lugbara easier? I made an
> outline and soon foxed out, not with "After all the grapes are sour" but
> with a barrage of: "After all that is a relative statement. All languages
> are difficult to learn. Try a click language and tell me it is easy. Try
> the French which is spoken through the nose. . . etc, etc"
>
> Well, this blog got me updating my draft again based on some of the issues
> pointed out in it. I am not yet finished. What got me particularly thinking
> was how to best address the challenge of that apt comparison with Chinese -
> due to the tonality of the language and the fact that we have several
> dialects, which makes it a very rich and admittedly "confusing" language.
> Allow me another foxing: Who says English or Dutch is not confusing?
>
>
> As an English language teacher myself, I got loads of examples to which I
> have no explanation or justification apart from saying, "Sorry, but
> exceptions confirm the rule!" Why do the English for example say, the
> singular form of the verb *to-be* is "*is*" and yet when you meet one
> person (that is singular, for sure) you as "How *are* you?" as if there is
> more than one person you are talking to? And the English have the audacity
> to say that is "Correct English"! Don't tell me the word *wound* in the
> following sentence has one and only one meaning: The nurse *wound* the
> bandage around the *wound* of the *wounded* boy. And why should the plural
> of *box* be bo*xes* and the one of ox be "ox*en*" and not "ox*es*"? And why
> should a *driv**er* be a person, yet *cooker* is a thing for cooking and
> the person is a *Cook* and what the *cook* does is to *cook*? They also
> confuse us! But, that's the beauty and uniqueness of languages anyhow. The
> more reason why people learn languages.
>
>
> On a serious note: As many people have said, the article indeed made me see
> some things differently. For example, that Lugbara is a visual language.
> Hmmm. House-stomach! True, indeed. Visual and descriptive. That should make
> it even easier to learn. Common language teachers, let's do something to
> make this thing more palatable for those who want to get a different peek
> into our culture - through the language.
>
> The time keeping, I agree is something that is kind of "different" and
> often works against us. Not only the Lugbara but Ugandans. Did you read
> that article of the Teso youth protesting their MPs appearing at 6.30pm for
> a meeting that was scheduled for 3pm. My foot. We still have something to
> learn from the positive aspects of other cultures, which may enrich the
> positives in ours.
>
>
> Overall, it was some good food for thought and rib-breaking.
>
> Thank you George.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On Fri, Apr 26, 2013 at 7:56 AM, Santorino Data
> <[email protected]>wrote:
>
>> Great piece of writing indeed.
>> This made my morning and now I understand why I spent 6 years in Arua and
>> still struggle to speak the language - confusion just that needs very
>> meticulous attention to detail and context even though I was from across
>> the Lugbara border in Kakwa land
>>
>>
>> *Dr. Data Santorino
>> **Lecturer Department of Pediatrics and Child Health
>> Mbarara University of Science and Technology
>> Uganda.*
>>
>> ------------------------------
>> *From:* Anyole J <[email protected]>
>> *To:* George Afi Obitre-Gama <[email protected]>; A Virtual Network for
>> friends of West Nile <[email protected]>; A Virtual Network for friends
>> of West Nile <[email protected]>
>> *Sent:* Thursday, April 25, 2013 7:21 PM
>> *Subject:* Re: [WestNileNet] Learning the Lugbara Language - A bloggers 2
>> cents-a good read!
>>
>> This is a very interesting piece. It is always nice to see things from an
>> out-siders perspective and make sense of things we are usually oblivious
>> to, house-mouth, za-mva, et all!
>>
>> The piece does bring out some things that worry anthropologist too,
>> cultures are gradually getting eroded "traditions have been changing here
>> as the pressure of our Western culture pervades and invades." as well, it
>> high lights some issues that continue to plague us, such as time keeping,
>> which has itself not been eroded by the same western culture.
>>
>> Thanks for sharing this, it did make my day that more interesting, got me
>> thinking. One of these days, "I'll beat my vernacular teacher a phone"
>>
>> Anyole
>>
>> ------------------------------
>> *From:* George Afi Obitre-Gama <[email protected]>
>> *To:* A Virtual Network for friends of West Nile <[email protected]>
>> *Sent:* Thursday, April 25, 2013 4:12:31 AM
>> *Subject:* [WestNileNet] Learning the Lugbara Language - A bloggers 2
>> cents-a good read!
>>
>> A new year, a new language, more
>> confusion<http://africraigs.travellerspoint.com/129/>
>> Why can't everyone speak English?
>> 16.01.2013 [image: sunny] 30 °C
>> Learning a new language and culture is like discovering a new world,
>> opening your eyes and mind to completely amazing and strange ideas, some
>> shocking, some fascinating, most unexpected.
>> Since the beginning of the new year, we have a new teacher, Eunice, who
>> is
>> hoping to make us into fluent Lugbara speakers within a few months…
>> Lugbara
>> is the local tribe in Arua, one of the 10 largest tribes in Uganda (out
>> of
>> a total of 34 ethnicities). The Lugbara are a tribe descended from
>> Nigeria to settle here. Their territory extends around Arua and into the
>> Democratic Republic of Congo, so families have been split by the
>> arbitrary
>> political boundaries drawn by the Europeans in Berlin in 1884.
>> Disconcertingly, we seem to be a source of great amusement for most of
>> the
>> ex-pats when we tell them we are taking this time to study Lugbara. “Good
>> luck”, they tell us. They then go on to tell you a story of someone who
>> has
>> been attempting the language for many years and haven’t gotten very far.
>> Some compare the language to Chinese, saying it is one of the most
>> difficult languages in the world to learn. It is quite depressing hearing
>> this, obviously… Additionally, having grown up in Congo and learning
>> Swahili there, having lived in Malawi and Kenya and trying to learn the
>> languages there, while being exposed to various other African languages,
>> it
>> is frustrating to have to start at zero like a baby once again….those
>> languages are nothing like Lugbara!
>> Most whites don’t even bother to learn Lugbara especially since this
>> tribe
>> is only one of 5 in the close vicinity of one another. For example, the
>> Alur are settled on the outskirts of Arua town. Their language is close
>> to
>> the Luo language which we were learning in Kenya. To make it even worse,
>> there are sub-sections of the Lugbara tribe with variations in the way
>> words are said. Whoopee to learning a difficult language which is only
>> spoken by a few and which is nothing like any other language we have ever
>> heard!
>> [image: Eunice, in action, confusing us]
>> Eunice, in action, confusing us
>>
>> Eunice is a good teacher, though, having patience with us as we sit on
>> the
>> veranda trying to repeat what on earth she has just said. As a Lugbara,
>> she
>> is also good at turning up late, demonstrating how a Lugbara should act.
>> As
>> Lilian, another Lugbara who works for us says, “Lugbaras is not following
>> time, ha!” and laughs out loud. So, anyway, she is almost an hour late
>> today, but since we live in Africa, you never know what may have
>> happened.
>> It could be a relative has just died and she has to go to the funeral.
>> Despite the issue of time-keeping, which especially bothers Emma, Eunice
>> has been effective at moving us on in the language. Emma and I already
>> feel
>> more confident using some simple phrases and greetings. For example, I
>> was
>> particularly proud when I asked for 10 eggs the other day in the local
>> wooden duka close to our home. “Ife mani augbe mundri”. The word for egg
>> 'augbe' is spoken as though you are swallowing an egg...
>> One of the problems of learning Lugbara is that the same words can mean
>> completely different things. So, for instance, the word for sauce,
>> “tibi”,
>> is the same word for ‘beard’, just with a different tone. Emma wonders if
>> this has anything to do with someone’s long beard dragging in their gravy
>> once upon a time. There are other examples, though the best so far is the
>> word ‘ago’, which if intonated differently, can either mean ‘husband’ or
>> ‘pumpkin’. A phrase like ‘my beautiful fiancée’ can also come across as
>> ‘my
>> beautiful warthog’, so any wannabe suitors need to be pretty careful in
>> this town…
>> Emma also uses a lot of imagination when it comes to remembering the
>> Lugbara phrases or words. So, for instance, the word for peanuts is
>> ‘funo’
>> (foon-oh). Emma thinks of little peanuts bouncing around and having a lot
>> of fun. It can be a bit of a tentative or weird link at times. She is
>> constantly whispering to me how I can remember a word. Awupi (A-whoopee)
>> is
>> the word for Aunt on your dad’s side. Obviously, this conjures up
>> thoughts
>> of playing a trick with my Auntie Barbara with a whoopee cushion…’Fetaa’
>> (feta) means gift and so it is remembered by thinking of giving someone a
>> gift of cheese. I often wish I had had Emma as a study partner for my
>> IGCSE
>> or IB exams in Holland as I would not have spent so many lost hours
>> staring
>> blankly at walls trying to cram boring information into my struggling
>> mind.
>> Alongside Emma's visual mind, we are also discovering that Lugbara is
>> quite a visual language. The word for ‘fingers’, for example, is
>> ‘hand-children’. This also works for ‘toes’ (foot children). The word for
>> door translates directly as ‘house-mouth’. The floor is the
>> ‘house-stomach’. Today, we learnt that veranda is the ‘joeti’ or ‘house
>> buttocks’!! You can’t make this stuff up, eh? It’s great!
>> Onomatopoeia is often used as well in the language. 'Kulukulu'
>> (koo-loo-koo-loo) is the name for a turkey and on hearing the sound a
>> turkey makes the other day when passing a homestead, I really thought it
>> described it well. Barking is ‘agbo-agbo’, crying is 'owu- owu' (oh-woo)
>> and laughing is 'ogu- ogu' (oh-goo). I can’t remember any of these sound
>> words properly and instead guess by making any noise that I think would
>> fit. It unfortunately doesn’t work. One of our favourite onomatopoeiatic
>> words is the word for butterfly ‘alapapa’, just like the sound of little
>> wings beating!
>> Language can also be an intimate doorway into the culture. We couldn’t
>> believe t, when Eunice explained the word for ‘girl’ is made up of 2
>> words
>> in Lugbara, ‘za’ meaning ‘meat’ and ‘mva’ meaning ‘child’! 'Meat-child!'
>> Girls have been seen as great little earners in a family by providing a
>> dowry of up to 20 head of cattle and 15 goats and extras like bows and
>> arrows and hoes.
>> However, so many of the traditions have been changing here as the
>> pressure
>> of our Western culture pervades and invades. Loin cloths have been out
>> since the 1950s or 60s (Maybe this is a good thing. I can’t see the Craig
>> family sauntering down the road semi-nude in Arua, and it would make an
>> embarrassing family photo). Instead, though, everyone is wearing
>> second-hand Western clothes. Out is the tradition to remove your 6 front
>> teeth using only a hammer and some herbs to encourage healing of your
>> mouth
>> afterwards (I’m also thankful this is not practised anymore), and marking
>> the skin by cuts with a razor in adolescence is now stopped. However, as
>> Eunice explained, the rather exaggerated buttocks size in women is still
>> favoured by the culture, especially if the buttocks also jiggles while
>> walking.
>> All-in-all, though pretty tiring, it is really interesting learning the
>> language and culture. It definitely does show how very different we
>> Westerners are (especially compared to the recent past) and so will help
>> us
>> understand how to approach people more effectively. We are hoping
>> knowledge of the language can help us build relationships and get
>> alongside people better (until we meet others from the next tribe along
>> who
>> don’t have a clue what we are saying…).
>> [image: Eunice, Lilian and all of us outside on the 'house-buttocks' in
>> the 'house-mouth']
>> Eunice, Lilian and all of us outside on the 'house-buttocks' in the
>> 'house-mouth'
>>
>> [image: Amelie in the jokoni]
>> Amelie in the jokoni
>>
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>
--
ASAF ADEBUA
DIRECTOR PLANNING AND DEVELOPMENT GULU UNIVERSITY
P. O. 166 GULU (UGANDA)
TEL. +256 471 435850
CELL +256 772 503909
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