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Upload Aiko's Lugbara Dictionary (since 2016).txt

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Aiko's Lugbara Dictionary (since 2016).txt CHANGED
@@ -70,7 +70,7 @@ uu (preferably single U) as in chew, for example cuu (pronounced chu)
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  z (letter Z becomes J after N) as in jean, for example onzi (pronounced onji). Otherwise, most times remains z as in zebra, for example ozu and when the first letter of a word, for example zukulu.
72
 
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- Simplified Lugbara (The foundational two-letter words below have more than (28 letters times 5 vowels at the end equals) 140 possible English meanings:
74
  aa ae ai ao au
75
  ba be bi bo bu// 'ba 'be 'bi 'bo 'bu
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  ca ce ci co cu
@@ -96,9 +96,9 @@ wa we wi wo wu// 'wa 'we 'wi 'wo 'wu
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  ya ye yi yo yu// 'ya 'ye 'yi 'yo 'yu
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  za ze zi zo zu
98
 
99
- The Old Vocabulary was small because some words have multiple meanings based on three major tones (to five including rising and falling), pronunciation or context eg o'du can mean day, thigh, omen, leopard; etc. However, New words keep being added to the existing language eg simu = phone; etc. Most nouns can denote both singular and plural (though adding yi after them also does); exceptions include mva [child] which becomes anzi [children]; etc while others are pronounced differently eg agu, agupi, etc. Adding suffixes -jo, -ko, -ru, -si and -yo to nouns creates new words; verbs also have -ku, -ma, -nga, -ta, -za and -zu. Adjectives follow the Subject eg buku eka = red book. In the entries ahead, semi-colon (;) shows different tones and meanings while goal brackets [ ] show translation. Lugbara sentences in past tense are structured using the Subject-Verb-Object arrangement like in English, but present continuous and future tenses follow S-O-V and ni [is] or nga [will, shall] may be added after the Subject to mark the difference eg YESU nga 'ba onzi pa [JESUS will save sinners]. When words are written together, the intended meanings may not change; so be very keen to spot the mashups eg Amanga votiyi 'be minira = Ama nga voti yi 'be mini ra [We will cast votes for you surely]. Short forms include: Ma mu ku = A mu ku [I'm not going]; Mi nya chapati = I nya chapati [You eat chapati]...
100
 
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- Some words are borrowed or modified from English plus other languages like Swahili, Luganda, Lingala, etc. Lugbara words are written the same way they are pronounced; repeated letters especially consonants look ambiguously redundant and can be reformed eg Vurra, Uleppi, Owaffa, Oluffe, Okollo, Ofudde, Mekki, etc unless very special and meaningful (What you see is what you hear [WYSIWYH])!
102
 
103
  Marks for Simple Tones:
104
  In English, some words have different spellings, but the same pronunciation eg chat/ chart; heart/ hurt/ hat; lord/ load; son/ sun; etc. In Lugbara, the same spelling can have different pronunciations (hence meanings) based on three (to five including rising and falling) tones indicated by accents as below.
@@ -137,11 +137,11 @@ a a (adj) not true, not at all, no (also yo); (prep) across
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  aa (v) stay, reside (also oa) eg Toro Suru ma Omukama ni aa Foti Poto-a. = Toro Kingdom's King stays in Fort Portal.
139
 
140
- aba (adj) many, abundant, (v) stray
141
 
142
  ababa (n) madness, craziness
143
 
144
- Abairo (n) waterfalls on River Asa in Oyufi Village (Wandi Parish within Oluko Subcounty, Ayivu Division of Arua City), transformed by John Acile as a tourist attraction since 2006, found at the end of Waterfalls Road and eastwards below Arise Center
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  Abaku (n) name meaning "I do not create"
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@@ -311,7 +311,7 @@ adu (n) humour
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  adui (n) rebel, enemy eg Sanibalati ni Nehemia ma adui! = Sanballat is Nehemiah's enemy!
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- Adumi (n) subcounty west of Arua Municipality and near the DR Congo Border, north of Pajulu, south of Oluva
315
 
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  adungu (n) multi-stringed and bow-arched wooden harp instrument that is usually covered with animal hide at the base and made in various sizes, the smaller ones are handheld while the bigger ones rest on the ground or floor for easy play eg Godia ni adungu avi. = Godia is playing the adungu.
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@@ -1413,6 +1413,8 @@ bido (n) jerrycan
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  bikini (n) female swimsuit, bathing suit, bikini eg Keyina su bikini. = Keyna wore a bikini.
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  bikoko (n) deaf-mute, dumb person (also abebe)
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  bile (n) wound (also ibi, ibile)
@@ -1637,7 +1639,7 @@ buzaru (adj) covered
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  'bi'bio (n) star
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- 'biko (n) feather, body hair, insect wing(s), fruit or tuber skincover
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  'bile (n) hole, pit (also 'bule) eg Tabi kini agupi 'bile gapi yi eco mi 'be aleni-a. = Tabi says the men digging a pit may throw you in.
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@@ -2425,6 +2427,8 @@ eti e'doza (n) start-up (investment), beginning
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  etia (prep) underneath
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  etiriko (n) snail
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  etirili (n) cricket (also etiringili)
@@ -3121,7 +3125,7 @@ irizori (adj) the second one (also irizo, irizuri) eg Danieli Arapu Moi ni andra
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  isaku (n) sieve, container with holes at the bottom for filtering local salt or aitipa from ash
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- ise (n) grasshopper (also ese), symbol in Maracha; (v) pull, homorocoryphus nitidulus (scientific name), nsenene in Luganda (Nsenene is the Grasshopper clan in Buganda [with names like Kalibala, Kawalya, Kimera, Masembe, Mwebe, etc]), ensenene in Runyankore eg Ise Nyendo (Masaka)-a angiri. = Grasshoppers are plenty in Nyendo (Masaka).
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  isekise (n) gum, glue
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@@ -5539,6 +5543,10 @@ opi opi (adj) swollen
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  opi ti (v) close (mouth), switch off, conclude, finalise eg Mi opi redio ti! = Switch off the radio!
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  opimaopima (n) cabbage (also kebeji)
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  opipia (n) boil
@@ -6077,7 +6085,7 @@ ragibi (n) rugby eg Nyu Zilandi "All Blacks" ndeki Sipiringibokisi Ragibi-a. = N
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  rakaka (adv) (do sth) first, in advance (also raka) eg Mi ofe rakaka! = (You) first pay!
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- Ramadani (n) Muslim month-long period for fasting (within 29 or 30 days) after and before sighting a new moon-crescent eg Yahya Au ni nyaka 'da Ramadani si. = John Au fasts during Ramadan.
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  Ramogi (n) subcounty north of Odravu
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@@ -8170,10 +8178,6 @@ On [Idri]
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  Off [Anyu]
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- Yes [Ee]
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-
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- No [Yo]
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-
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  Power [Aci]
8178
 
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  Menu, Selection or Options [Peta/ Peza/ Pezu]
@@ -8196,6 +8200,10 @@ OK [MUKE]
8196
 
8197
  Call or Dial [Gba]
8198
 
 
 
 
 
8199
  1 Missed Call(s) [Gbata icezaru 1 (Alu)]
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  Receive [Ai]
@@ -8362,9 +8370,9 @@ Semakula = Male-given name with meaning related to gains [Se maku la = Pulled th
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  LOST IN TRANSLATION (DREAMCAST):
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- This encyclopedic research documentation is inspired by (and dedicated to) Cynthia Letasi, aka Rejoice (The Beautyful One and Green Riding Hood - now Mrs. Mungufeni born on Thursday 17th August 1995; roger that Ayi Kwei Armah) who changed my worldview like a valuable pearl (Matthew 13:45-46), worth far above rubies (Proverbs 31:10), Kumari in Nepal (Orient) or Divine Feminine between 2001-6; made me feel like Bob Harris in Arua (not Japan) around 2003 because she was 11 years younger than me. This girl drained amalala ga kibuga [Luganda for: city haughtiness] out of me. To be honest, she was my first true "superhigh" crush within Arua (West Nile) after the Y2K Computer Bug Doom's Day didn't happen though I never told her my exact heartfelt reality for multiple years (Just tried to show it through kind, unapologetic, smile-inducing treatment until she boldly confessed something directly to me that I will treasure until infinity). I adored how her glowing eyes hawked at me (One of my favourite, unforgettable memories about CL). Furthermore, her lookalikes included the volatile Tonto Dikeh (Nigerian), lyric-savvy Sheebah Karungi, decent Betty Mpologoma, unflinching Victoria Bagaya, worry-free Spice Diana as well as easygoing Scarlett Johansson who automatically became my all-time favourites; I knew her before all of them except maybe Betty who began her diamond singing career in 1999. Queenie, one of the lead vocalists in the Miracle Cathedral Rubaga (MCR) Proclaim Music choir also has that Cynthia aura plus Pretty Banks, Sheila Gashumba, etc. Even though I reconnected with Xnthi (nickname I gave her meaning Numberless or Infinite value) via Facebook at the turn of the 2010s, I did not see her again physically until Tuesday 12th February 2019 walking southwards with her darkskinned female friend on the hyper-straight Arua Avenue at the Ediofe Road Junction (while I escorted my cousin to a printshop before he rushed to Onduparaka to see his sister). That was about 13 unlucky years since the last time, but only three surreal days after dreaming about her. I smiled like GOD's sun was shining on me in the afternoon before rush hour; it was the same day Onduparaka drew 0-0 with URA FC in the Ugandan top-flight league. Obsession is not a crime, just harness it like human solar electricity. Disconnection is re-direction; too much love will heal you. Love is indestructible and the Greatest Thing: I admired Cynthia's pleasant appearance and supadupa fluency at a very tender age of 6 to 11 and felt inspired to polish my own linguistics by reading Lugbara afresh since I learnt my mother tongue despite being downgraded as backward in Busoga (Birth to 11 years) and Buganda only by listening to Lugbara people talk. Even though I spoke and understood it, I couldn't transcribe Lugbara well like English but when moonstruck by our Mt. Wati Road (Arua) neighbour's adorable brownskinned daughter, I was motivated to re-study this vernacular from Northwestern Uganda in black and white (using music lyrics, Biblia, Straight Talk newspapers, brochures, internet articles, other literature, then a Fountain Publishers 2009 dictionary compiled by Willy Ngaka, Edward O'du'bua and Paul Iga Ongua [bought for a Twenty10 gig from Sarah Ojirot at Uganda Deaf Women's Organisation; my Design Manager from UCU named Edmund Asingwire (a Munyankole) also hired me to do artwork for him and Jolynn Investments Limited in Lugbara], exclusively English Dictionaries, a Chinese Dictionary for finding Word Classes plus asked various people including my Parents and Facebook friends like Okitembeki Ndengendu [Enoch Opika Diku], etc). Consequently, I would perhaps grasp Lugbara the way ShaoLan Hsueh created Chineasy, then fabricate my own Synthetic Artificial Lugbara Technology (SALT), Informative Synthetic Encoder (ISE) or Ojapi Converter. My Big Brother Victor Draman(i) Afayo (an I.T. Specialist based in KLA City) wanted to create a Lugbara.net website and gave me the assignment of doing research for him in the latter 2000s. I also decided to create my own Lugbara Culture Blog (Amazing World of Lugbara) around 2008, a process that inspired this encyclopedic Dictionary too. The words here are the ones used on UBC Radio (formerly Radio Uganda), Voice Of Life (probably since 1997 though I started listening in 2000), Arua One (since 2002), Koboko FM, Nile FM (since 2004), Radio Pacis, Access FM (since Monday 19th March 2018) plus BTN Television (from 2003), Westnile TV (from around 2020) and in Voice Commands for Airtel Uganda, et cetera. During one of the Mobile Monday sessions in KLA City, I asked a Google Executive from Germany who came to UG around 2012 if Lugbara could be added to the advanced Google Translate Machine. He replied that he would forward my Concern to the relevant Office. I also posted a Request at Wikimedia for a Lugbara Wiktionary but there weren't enough Volunteer Editors as is the Requirement for the Project to hatch; a Lugbarapedia would be the eventual outcome. Tualu.org [West Nile Portal] announced that they were working on a Project of over 500 Lugbara Words but I could not find the draft PDF. Nevertheless, Tualu posted a long and thorough Dictionary of Lugbara Personal Names by Alex Matua Asumi and his Colleagues: Fortunate Drateru, Moses Dramiga and Proscovia Adrupiyo. There were no Names listed with the Letters H, Q and X, but the ones posted are more than enough; I commend them for that, a Masterpiece about Ru'daza Lugbara niri (Naming in the Lugbara Tradition). Saidi Omar Dramani (Islamic University In Uganda - Mbale) also posted a PDF of his 2007 Dissertation Research for a Lugbarati Dictionary; it was very helpful. Language has to be preserved through documentation and transmitted to anyone connected or interested because cultural heritage represents a collective identity of values, diversity, traditions and assets passed around from generation to generation eg my parents (James + Elizabeth Dramani) to me, though my mother departed in Twenty22 (during Volume 7). Some relatives and natives would laugh at my pronunciations or choice of words but it didn't phase me. I've never been ashamed to be called Omulugwara even if it is a byword for stupidity, Naked People (Only Karamoja was ranked before us) and backwardness among some communities. Aren't we all descendants of Noah, the Flood Survivor? One day, I bypassed two dudes on Acacia Avenue in KLA and heard them speak what sounded like broken Lugbara; I reasoned later that it might have been Madi language. Also, Aringa is like Lugbara Patois or Filipino. During May 2023, someone asked me why I study Lugbara yet it is not useful and I told him not to diss my mother tongue like that; garbage or waste appears worthless until it's recycled and given value: Lugbara is a multinational language spoken mainly across three colonial borders which converge at Salia Musala (about 2 hours by car northwards from Arua City). There are nine Lugbara clans in DR Congo (Kari Culture Minister - John Godo, a UPC stalwart, taught me that in 2009: When I went to Ariwara [inside DRC] the following year, I was stunned by the amount of Lugbara songs playing loudly near the markets). #SpeakLugbara on International Mother Tongue Day (21st February)! I strongly believe Generative AI can learn Lugbarati and make it reuseable and applicable in various fields; Deep Learning Indaba (DLI), Ambani, Artificial Intelligence for Development-Africa Network (AI4D-Africa), Hugging Face, Deep Site, Foundation for Lugbarati Development Initiative (FLUDI) or Lugbara GPT type-of-way. Live translation of President M7's speeches by people like Fred Bada, John Ondoma, etc plus other arrangements eg crusades, conferences, weddings, funerals and so on can also be a reference... In December 2013, the Lugbarati Language Board proposed an Orthography Guide with 45 letters (including 7 vowels and 38 consonants). Tonal Lugbara literature with its many character symbols (accents, crosses, dashes or hyphens, dots, umlauts, etc) seems advanced plus crowdily complex (like the new books commissioned from DR Congo that I used to see at the Radio Pacis Printery) and scares away learners or researchers, but the simpler version shared in this wordbook is legit too... Lugbara funeral songs have been replaced with church hymns and modern Gospel music... In my Allegory of Artificial Ignorance: For machines to learn Lugbara, humans (both self-motivated and paid contributors) must train them or organise datasets for AI to decode unsupervised... Artificial Dreams (or Hallucinations) can also come true like Dreamcast... My makeshift Word Interchange Theory (WIT) from 1996 was not far-fetched afterall (feeling like Michael Jordan versus Detroit Pistons: No rules)...
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- When I was in Senior 5 (during 2001), I told my hostelmates that one day there will be a radio device that converts words spoken on air into text like S2T (Speech-2-Text) or Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) and displayed on a screen, not just lyrics as Jango Radio does, but conversations too (Inspired by the way we transcribed classroom dictation from teachers). I was labelled "mulalu [Luganda for: mad]" but dreams are not hopeless; GOD's Time brings them to life for instance Google Assistant, Meet (In-chat captions), Apple's Siri, TranSay (My Favourite), Lingmo One2One, Translate 4 Me, Waverly Labs Pilot, Mesay, Langogo, Translaty, MUAMA Enence, Xiaomi AI Translator, Clik, WT2 Translator, Travis, LeTrans, Sigmo, NTT DoCoMo Translation Service, OBTranslate (from Nigeria), Logbar ili, OpenAI's ChatGPT or Whisper, Assembly AI, iFlytek, etc. Twitter (X) Spaces is also not very far from my Ongo (Ojapi Converter) vision. Zero-Shot Machine Translation tech is a model that can learn to translate words into another language without having to see any examples... Meta's Universal Speech Translator is a very ambitious AI research project that might improve language-mixing or Computer-Assisted Translation like Google Translate does... LaMDA (Language Model for Dialogue Applications) which Blake Lamoine labelled "sentient" was originally introduced as Meena in 2020. It's a conversational Large Language Model (LLM) built by Google... The Madi-Lugbara language is related to the languages of Southern Nigeria eg Yoruba, Igbo, Edo, Iduma, Igala, Igbira, Gbari and Nupe. In addition, we can include Ijo and Kalabari of the Niger Delta plus the Bariba - north of Yoruba and Aja (Ewe) spoken in Southern Dahomey (Benin), Togo and South-Eastern Ghana... Some people consider Lugbara a dialect of Madi but many do not accept this theory. In fact, a survey concluded that the Ogoko, Okollo and Rigbo dialects which are considered Southern Madi or Madi (I)ndri, should be categorised as dialects of Lugbara. Besides, we share the same names, numbers and many words. The only mother tongue interference I have heard from tribemates is mixing S with SH like when saying "soap" and "shop" or -TION with -SON eg "information" becomes "informason". Some interchange D with TH eg "together" is spoken as "togeder" while "three" may be pronounced "tiri" but most times, pronunciation is okay. Exactly 11 days before I created my electronic Lugbara Dictionary in Twenty16, Google Translate switched to Google Neural Machine Translation (GNMT) translating whole sentences at a time rather than piece by piece which GT used to do through Statistical Machine Translation since 28th April 2006. GNMT improves the Quality of Translation because it uses an Example-based Machine Translation (EBMT) in which the system learns from millions of examples... In 2020, with support from the Hewlett Foundation, Sunbird AI commenced the African language technology project. They created a large multilingual parallel text dataset of Ugandan languages, with translations in Acholi, Ateso, Luganda, Lugbara and Runyankole. On Saturday 11th October 2025, an AI Language Model called Sunflower (developed by Sunbird) was officially launched and it is described as "the ChatGPT for Uganda"... GeoPoll (a global research organisation) has datasets in Lugbara while JEHOVAH's Witnesses translate their publications into Lugbara (Available at www.jw.org). Companies like MTN, dfcu Bank, etc also use Lugbara in their PR content... It was very unreal to discover on Sunday 10th September 2023 while googling for "Lugbara AI" that the mother of Jeff Dean (55 year old Google AI Lead then) speaks "fluent Lugbara"; she lived in West Nile when Jeffrey was 5 years old. I guess she knows that Lugbara is learnable by machines; Meta introduced its own AI on WhatsApp a few days later. I love the fact that it paraphrases websites rejected by Wikipedia. Mark Zuckerberg believes AI will make superintelligent multi-lingual connections possible for all. When you copy some of the BigAMBO [Words] in this dictionary and paste as a chat message to Meta AI like a Paul and Silas jailbreak, it can learn Ugandan Lugbara by reading patterns and fine-tuning itself to chat with you even though it used a strange vocabulary as Lugbara in Twenty24 (probably Central or West African) like TranslatorMind the following year. Sam Altman (CEO at Open AI) also revealed that you can add knowledge and create a custom GPT by uploading files in the GPTs App Store. Self-Adapting or Adjusting LLMs (SEAL or SALMs) will learn new words by themselves... Vibe-coding can also help you create Lugbara chatbots, games eg Scrabble or Pictionary plus other software for Investors, Traders, Friends, Lovers, In-laws, Tourists, Media Watchers, Music Listeners, Conference Audiences, Ethnodoxologists, Migrants, Refugees and those supertalented in Xenoglossy... The ISO 639-3 Language Code for Lugbara is lgg while the Glottocode is lugb1240, but I wish the language code for Lugbara was simply Lbr; it corresponds better though already taken by Lohorung language (endangered Sino-Tibetan language spoken in Nepal). The quick, brown fox jumps over the lazy dog!
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  [GODisgreat!]
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  z (letter Z becomes J after N) as in jean, for example onzi (pronounced onji). Otherwise, most times remains z as in zebra, for example ozu and when the first letter of a word, for example zukulu.
72
 
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+ Simplified Lugbara (The foundational 2-letter token words below have more than (28 alphabet letters times 5 vowels at the end equals) 140 possible English meanings:
74
  aa ae ai ao au
75
  ba be bi bo bu// 'ba 'be 'bi 'bo 'bu
76
  ca ce ci co cu
 
96
  ya ye yi yo yu// 'ya 'ye 'yi 'yo 'yu
97
  za ze zi zo zu
98
 
99
+ The Old Vocabulary was small because some words have multiple meanings based on three major tones (to five including rising and falling), pronunciation or context eg o'du can mean day, thigh, omen, leopard; etc. However, New words keep being added to the existing language eg simu = phone; etc. Most nouns can denote both singular and plural (though adding yi after them also does); exceptions include mva [child] which becomes anzi [children]; etc while others are pronounced differently eg agu, agupi, etc. Adding suffixes -jo, -ko, -ru, -si and -yo to nouns creates new words; verbs also have -ku, -ma, -nga, -ta, -za and -zu. Adjectives follow the Subject eg buku eka = red book. In the entries ahead, semi-colon (;) shows different tones and meanings while goal brackets [ ] show translation. Lugbara sentences in past tense are structured using the Subject-Verb-Object arrangement like in English, but present continuous and future tenses follow S-O-V and ni [is] or nga [will, shall] may be added after the Subject to mark the difference eg YESU nga 'ba onzi pa [JESUS will save sinners]. When words are written together, the intended meanings may not change; so be very keen to spot the mashups eg Amanga votiyi 'be minira = Ama nga voti yi 'be mini ra [We will cast votes for you surely]. Short forms include: Ma mu ku = A mu ku [I'm not going]; Mi nya chapati osu si = I nya chapati osu si [You eat chapati with beans]...
100
 
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+ Some words are borrowed or modified from English plus other languages like Swahili, Luganda, Lingala, etc. Lugbara words are written the same way they are pronounced; repeated letters especially consonants look ambiguously redundant and can be reformed eg Vurra, Uleppi, Owaffa, Oluffe, Okollo, Ofudde, Mekki, etc unless very special and meaningful (What you see is what you hear [WYSIWYH]).
102
 
103
  Marks for Simple Tones:
104
  In English, some words have different spellings, but the same pronunciation eg chat/ chart; heart/ hurt/ hat; lord/ load; son/ sun; etc. In Lugbara, the same spelling can have different pronunciations (hence meanings) based on three (to five including rising and falling) tones indicated by accents as below.
 
137
 
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  aa (v) stay, reside (also oa) eg Toro Suru ma Omukama ni aa Foti Poto-a. = Toro Kingdom's King stays in Fort Portal.
139
 
140
+ aba (adj) many, abundant, a lot; (v) stray
141
 
142
  ababa (n) madness, craziness
143
 
144
+ Abairo (n) waterfalls on River Asa in Oyufi Village (Wandi Parish within Oluko Subcounty, Ayivu Division of Arua City) meaning "abundant (water)", transformed by John Acile as a tourist attraction since 2006, found at the end of Waterfalls Road and eastwards below Arise Center
145
 
146
  Abaku (n) name meaning "I do not create"
147
 
 
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  adui (n) rebel, enemy eg Sanibalati ni Nehemia ma adui! = Sanballat is Nehemiah's enemy!
313
 
314
+ Adumi (n) subcounty west of Ayivu and near the DR Congo Border, north of Pajulu, south of Oluva
315
 
316
  adungu (n) multi-stringed and bow-arched wooden harp instrument that is usually covered with animal hide at the base and made in various sizes, the smaller ones are handheld while the bigger ones rest on the ground or floor for easy play eg Godia ni adungu avi. = Godia is playing the adungu.
317
 
 
1413
 
1414
  bikini (n) female swimsuit, bathing suit, bikini eg Keyina su bikini. = Keyna wore a bikini.
1415
 
1416
+ biko (n) insect wings
1417
+
1418
  bikoko (n) deaf-mute, dumb person (also abebe)
1419
 
1420
  bile (n) wound (also ibi, ibile)
 
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1640
  'bi'bio (n) star
1641
 
1642
+ 'biko (n) feather, body hair, fruit or tuber skincover
1643
 
1644
  'bile (n) hole, pit (also 'bule) eg Tabi kini agupi 'bile gapi yi eco mi 'be aleni-a. = Tabi says the men digging a pit may throw you in.
1645
 
 
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2428
  etia (prep) underneath
2429
 
2430
+ Etiopia (n) Ethiopia
2431
+
2432
  etiriko (n) snail
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2434
  etirili (n) cricket (also etiringili)
 
3125
 
3126
  isaku (n) sieve, container with holes at the bottom for filtering local salt or aitipa from ash
3127
 
3128
+ ise (n) grasshopper (also ese), symbol in Maracha; (v) pull, homorocoryphus nitidulus (scientific name), nsenene in Luganda (Nsenene is the Grasshopper clan in Buganda [with names like Kalibala, Kawalya, Kimera, Masembe, Mwebe, etc]), ensenene in Runyankore, eating by humans permitted in Leviticus 11:20-23 eg Ise Nyendo (Masaka)-a angiri. = Grasshoppers are plenty in Nyendo (Masaka).
3129
 
3130
  isekise (n) gum, glue
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5543
 
5544
  opi ti (v) close (mouth), switch off, conclude, finalise eg Mi opi redio ti! = Switch off the radio!
5545
 
5546
+ opile (n) wings (also opilebiko) eg Serafi ma opile azia. = A seraphim (angel) has six wings.
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+
5548
+ opilebi (n) insect wings
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+
5550
  opimaopima (n) cabbage (also kebeji)
5551
 
5552
  opipia (n) boil
 
6085
 
6086
  rakaka (adv) (do sth) first, in advance (also raka) eg Mi ofe rakaka! = (You) first pay!
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6088
+ Ramadani (n) Muslim month-long period for fasting (within 29 or 30 days) after and before sighting a new moon-crescent eg Yahiya Au ni nyaka 'da Ramadani si. = John Au fasts during Ramadan.
6089
 
6090
  Ramogi (n) subcounty north of Odravu
6091
 
 
8178
 
8179
  Off [Anyu]
8180
 
 
 
 
 
8181
  Power [Aci]
8182
 
8183
  Menu, Selection or Options [Peta/ Peza/ Pezu]
 
8200
 
8201
  Call or Dial [Gba]
8202
 
8203
+ Yes [Ee]
8204
+
8205
+ No [Yo]
8206
+
8207
  1 Missed Call(s) [Gbata icezaru 1 (Alu)]
8208
 
8209
  Receive [Ai]
 
8370
 
8371
 
8372
  LOST IN TRANSLATION (DREAMCAST):
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+ This encyclopedic research documentation is inspired by (and dedicated to) Cynthia Letasi, aka Rejoice (The Beautyful One and Green Riding Hood - now Mrs. Mungufeni born on Thursday 17th August 1995; roger that Ayi Kwei Armah) who changed my worldview like a valuable pearl (Matthew 13:45-46), worth far above rubies (Proverbs 31:10), Kumari in Nepal (Orient) or Divine Feminine between 2001-6; made me feel like Bob Harris in Arua (not Japan) around 2003 because she was 11 years younger than me. This girl drained amalala ga kibuga [Luganda for: city haughtiness] out of me. To be honest, she was my first true "superhigh" crush within Arua (West Nile) after the Y2K Computer Bug Doom's Day didn't happen though I never told her my exact heartfelt reality for multiple years (Just tried to show it through kind, unapologetic treatment (loved her smile) until she confessed something stunning directly to me that I will treasure until infinity). I adored how her glowing eyes hawked at me (One of my favourite, unforgettable memories about CL). Furthermore, her lookalikes included the volatile Tonto Dikeh (Nigerian), lyric-savvy Sheebah Karungi, decent Betty Mpologoma, unflinching Victoria Bagaya, worry-free Spice Diana as well as easygoing Scarlett Johansson who automatically became my all-time favourites; I knew her before all of them except maybe Betty who began her diamond singing career in 1999. Queenie, one of the lead vocalists in the Miracle Cathedral Rubaga (MCR) Proclaim Music choir also has that Cynthia aura plus Pretty Banks, Sheila Gashumba, etc. Even though I reconnected with Xnthi (nickname I gave her meaning Numberless or Infinite value) via Facebook at the turn of the 2010s, I did not see her again physically until Tuesday 12th February 2019 walking southwards with her darkskinned female friend on the hyper-straight Arua Avenue at the Ediofe Road Junction (while I escorted my cousin to a printshop before he rushed to Onduparaka to see his sister). That was about 13 unlucky years since the last time, but only three surreal days after dreaming about her. I smiled like GOD's sun was shining on me in the afternoon before rush hour; it was the same day Onduparaka drew 0-0 with URA FC in the Ugandan top-flight league. Obsession is not a crime, just harness it like human solar electricity. Disconnection is re-direction; too much love will heal you. Love is indestructible and the Greatest Thing: I admired Cynthia's pleasant appearance and supadupa fluency at a very tender age of 6 to 11 and felt inspired to polish my own linguistics by reading Lugbara afresh since I learnt my mother tongue in Busoga (Birth to 11 years) and Buganda only by listening to Lugbara people talk despite being downgraded as backward or lower class (Not Upper). Even though I spoke and understood it, I couldn't transcribe Lugbara well like English but when moonstruck by our Mt. Wati Road (Arua) neighbour's adorable brownskinned daughter, I was motivated to re-study this vernacular from Northwestern Uganda in black and white (using music lyrics, Biblia, Straight Talk newspapers, brochures, internet articles, other literature, then a Fountain Publishers 2009 dictionary compiled by Willy Ngaka, Edward O'du'bua and Paul Iga Ongua [bought for a Twenty10 gig from Sarah Ojirot at Uganda Deaf Women's Organisation; my Design Manager from UCU named Edmund Asingwire - a Munyankole - also hired me after campus to do artwork for him and Jolynn Investments Limited in Lugbara], exclusively English dictionaries, a Chinese Dictionary for finding word classes plus asked various people including my Parents and Facebook friends like Okitembeki Ndengendu [Enoch Opika Diku], etc). Consequently, I would perhaps grasp Lugbara the way ShaoLan Hsueh created Chineasy, then fabricate my own Synthetic Artificial Lugbara Technology (SALT), Informative Synthetic Encoder (ISE) or Ojapi Converter. My big brother Victor Draman(i) Afayo (an I.T. Specialist based in KLA City) wanted to create a Lugbara.net website and gave me the assignment of doing research for him in the latter half of the 2000s; I decided to create my own Lugbara Culture blog (Amazing World of Lugbara) plus Facebook groups with the data around 2008, a process that inspired this encyclopedic dictionary too. The words here are the ones used on UBC Radio (formerly Radio Uganda), Voice Of Life (probably since 1997 though I started listening in 2000), Arua One (since 2002), Koboko FM, Nile FM (since 2004), Radio Pacis, Access FM (since Monday 19th March 2018) plus BTN Television (from 2003), Westnile TV (from around 2020) and in voice commands for Airtel Uganda, et cetera. During one of the Mobile Monday sessions in KLA City, I asked a Google Executive from Germany who came to UG around 2012 if Lugbara could be added to the advanced Google Translate machine. He replied that he would forward my concern to the relevant office. Additionally, I posted a request at Wikimedia for a Lugbara Wiktionary but there weren't enough volunteer editors as is the requirement for the project to hatch; a Lugbarapedia would be the eventual outcome. Tualu.org [West Nile Portal] announced that they were working on a project of over 500 Lugbara words but I could not find their draft PDF. Nevertheless, Tualu posted a long and thorough Dictionary of Lugbara Personal Names by Alex Matua Asumi and his colleagues: Fortunate Drateru, Moses Dramiga and Proscovia Adrupiyo. There were no names listed with the letters H, Q and X, but the ones posted are more than enough; I commend them for that, a masterpiece about Ru'daza Lugbara niri (Naming in the Lugbara Tradition). Saidi Omar Dramani (Islamic University In Uganda - Mbale) also posted a PDF of his 2007 dissertation research for a Lugbarati Dictionary; it was very helpful. Language has to be preserved through documentation and transmitted to anyone connected or interested because cultural heritage represents a collective identity of values, diversity, traditions and assets passed around from generation to generation eg my Parents (James + Elizabeth Dramani) to me, though my Mother departed in Twenty22 (during Volume 7). Some relatives and natives would laugh at my pronunciations or choice of words but it didn't phase me. I've never been ashamed to be called Omulugwara even if it is a byword for stupidity, Naked People (Only Karamoja was ranked before us) and backwardness among some communities. Aren't we all descendants of Noah, the Flood Survivor? One day, I bypassed two dudes on Acacia Avenue in KLA and heard them speak what sounded like broken Lugbara; I reasoned later that it might have been Madi language. Also, Aringa is like Lugbara Patois or Filipino. During May 2023, someone asked me why I study Lugbara yet it is not useful and I told him not to belittle my mother tongue like that; garbage or waste appears worthless until it's recycled and given value: Lugbara is a multinational language spoken mainly across three colonial borders which converge at Salia Musala (about 2 hours by car northwards from Arua City). There are nine Lugbara clans in DR Congo (Kari Culture Minister - John Godo, a UPC stalwart, taught me that in 2009: When I went to Ariwara [inside DRC] the following year, I was stunned by the amount of Lugbara songs playing loudly near the markets, more than Lingala or even English). #SpeakLugbara on International Mother Tongue Day (21st February)! I strongly believe Generative AI can learn Lugbarati and make it reuseable and applicable in various fields; Deep Learning Indaba (DLI), Ambani, Artificial Intelligence for Development-Africa Network (AI4D-Africa), Hugging Face, Deep Site, Foundation for Lugbarati Development Initiative (FLUDI), Quantum ML or Lugbara GPT type-of-way. Live translation of President M7's speeches by people like Fred Bada, John Ondoma, etc plus other arrangements eg crusades, conferences, weddings, funerals and so on can also be a reference... In December 2013, the Lugbarati Language Board proposed an Orthography Guide with 45 letters (including 7 vowels and 38 consonants). Tonal Lugbara literature with its many character symbols (accents, crosses, dashes or hyphens, dots, umlauts, etc) seems advanced plus crowdily complex (like the new books commissioned from DR Congo that I used to see at the Radio Pacis Printery) and scares away learners or researchers, but the simpler version shared in this wordbook is legit too... Lugbara funeral songs have been replaced with church hymns and modern Gospel music... In my Allegory of Artificial Ignorance: For machines to learn Lugbara, humans (both self-motivated and paid contributors) must train them or organise datasets for AI to decode unsupervised... Artificial Dreams (or Hallucinations) can also come true like Dreamcast... My makeshift Word Interchange Theory (WIT) from 1996 was not far-fetched afterall (feeling like Michael Jordan versus Detroit Pistons: No rules)...
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+ When I was in Senior 5 (during 2001), I told my hostelmates that one day there will be a radio device that converts words spoken on air into text like S2T (Speech-2-Text) or Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) and displayed on a screen, not just lyrics as Jango Radio does, but conversations too (Inspired by the way we transcribed classroom dictation from teachers). I was labelled "mulalu [Luganda for: mad]" but dreams are not hopeless; GOD's time brings them to life for instance Google Assistant, Meet (In-chat captions), Apple's Siri, TranSay (My Favourite), Lingmo One2One, Translate 4 Me, Waverly Labs Pilot, Mesay, Langogo, Translaty, MUAMA Enence, Xiaomi AI Translator, Clik, WT2 Translator, Travis, LeTrans, Sigmo, NTT DoCoMo Translation Service, OBTranslate (from Nigeria), Logbar ili, OpenAI's ChatGPT or Whisper, Assembly AI, iFlytek, etc. Twitter (X) Spaces is also not very far from my Ongo (Ojapi Converter) vision. Zero-Shot Machine Translation tech is a model that can learn to translate words into another language without having to see any examples... Meta's Universal Speech Translator is a very ambitious AI research project that might improve language-mixing or Computer-Assisted Translation... LaMDA (Language Model for Dialogue Applications) which Blake Lamoine labelled "sentient" was originally introduced as Meena in 2020. It's a conversational Large Language Model (LLM) built by Google... The Madi-Lugbara language is related to the languages of Southern Nigeria eg Yoruba, Igbo, Edo, Iduma, Igala, Igbira, Gbari and Nupe. In addition, we can include Ijo and Kalabari of the Niger Delta plus the Bariba - north of Yoruba and Aja (Ewe) spoken in Southern Dahomey (Benin), Togo and South-Eastern Ghana... Some people consider Lugbara a dialect of Madi but many do not accept this theory. In fact, a survey concluded that the Ogoko, Okollo and Rigbo dialects which are considered Southern Madi or Madi (I)ndri, should be categorised as dialects of Lugbara. Besides, we share the same names, numbers and many words. The only mother tongue interference I have heard from tribemates is mixing S with SH like when saying "soap" and "shop" or -TION with -SON eg "information" becomes "informason". Some interchange D with TH eg "together" is spoken as "togeder" while "three" may be pronounced "tiri" but most times, pronunciation is okay. Exactly 11 days before I created my electronic Lugbara Dictionary in Twenty16, Google Translate switched to Google Neural Machine Translation (GNMT) translating whole sentences at a time rather than piece by piece which GT used to do through Statistical Machine Translation since 28th April 2006. GNMT improves the Quality of Translation because it uses an Example-based Machine Translation (EBMT) in which the system learns from millions of examples... In 2020, with support from the Hewlett Foundation, Sunbird AI commenced the African language technology project. They created a large multilingual parallel text dataset of Ugandan languages, with translations in Acholi, Ateso, Luganda, Lugbara and Runyankole. On Saturday 11th October 2025, an AI Language Model called Sunflower (developed by Sunbird) was officially launched and it is described as "the ChatGPT for Uganda"... GeoPoll (a global research organisation) has datasets in Lugbara while JEHOVAH's Witnesses translate their publications into Lugbara (Available at www.jw.org). Companies like MTN, dfcu Bank, etc also use Lugbara in their PR content... It was very unreal to discover on Sunday 10th September 2023 while googling for "Lugbara AI" that the mother of Jeff Dean (55 year old Google AI Lead then) speaks "fluent Lugbara"; she lived in West Nile when Jeffrey was 5 years old. I guess she knows that Lugbara is learnable by machines; Meta introduced its own AI on WhatsApp a few days later. I love the fact that it paraphrases websites rejected by Wikipedia. Mark Zuckerberg believes AI will make superintelligent multi-lingual connections possible for all. When you copy some of the BigAMBO [Words] in this dictionary and paste as a chat message to Meta AI like a Paul and Silas jailbreak, it can learn Ugandan Lugbara by reading patterns and fine-tuning itself to chat with you even though it used a strange vocabulary as Lugbara in Twenty24 (probably Central or West African) like TranslatorMind the following year. Sam Altman (CEO at Open AI) also revealed that you can add knowledge and create a custom GPT by uploading files in the GPTs App Store. Self-Adapting or Adjusting LLMs (SEAL or SALMs) will learn new words by themselves... Vibe-coding can also help you create Lugbara chatbots, games eg Scrabble or Pictionary plus other software for investors, traders, friends, lovers, in-laws, tourists, media watchers, music listeners, conference audiences, ethnodoxologists, migrants, refugees and those supertalented in Xenoglossy... The ISO 639-3 Language Code for Lugbara is lgg while the Glottocode is lugb1240, but I wish the language code for Lugbara was simply Lbr (which is my Dictionary logo); it corresponds better though already taken by Lohorung language (endangered Sino-Tibetan language spoken in Nepal). The quick, brown fox jumps over the lazy dog!
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