Dholuo Language Guide

Also spoken in
Kenya, Tanzania
Script
Latin

Where it's spoken

Dholuo is described as spoken by Luo people in central and southern parts of Nyanza Province in south-western Kenya, and by a further, smaller number of speakers in Tanzania near the Kenyan border. Glottolog lists Kenya and Tanzania as its countries. Kenya's constitution names Kiswahili as the national language and Kiswahili and English as the official languages, and it commits the State to promote the development and use of indigenous languages. A speech-database document states that Dholuo has no official status and that there is no official standard dialect, but that the South Nyanza variety is used in education, churches and broadcasting.

Sources

Script & pronunciation

Dholuo is written in the Latin script. A speech-database document lists the letters used for Dholuo as A to Z plus the apostrophe, and says that q, v, x and z are not used in native Dholuo words but only in the spelling of foreign names and borrowings. The apostrophe is part of the spelling: in this app's card Ok ang'eyo ("I don't know"), the card's note explains that ng' is one sound. The same document describes Dholuo as a tone language and says tone is not marked in its lexicon.

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Grammar essentials

Basic word order is subject–verb–object, and the negative morpheme is placed before the verb. A linguistic study describes an unextended Dholuo verb as usually made up of a subject prefix, then the verb root, then an indicative mood suffix and an object suffix; its example gi-mos-o-u, with the prefix gi- marking a third-person plural subject, means "They are greeting you." This app's card Ok ang'eyo ("I don't know") shows both patterns: its breakdown is ok (not) plus a- (first person singular) plus ng'eyo (know). In the card Iwacho Dho-Ingresa? ("Do you speak English?"), the note explains the prefix i- as second person singular, and the card says that several people take a different form.

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