Acholi Alphabet

Acholi, Leb Acoli to its speakers (leb means tongue), is written in the Latin alphabet; Alfred Malandra's Standard Orthography lists 23 entries in this order: A B Bw C D E G I J K L M N Ny Ŋ O P Pw R T U W Y. Bw, ny and pw are letter combinations counted as alphabet entries. The letters f, h, q, s, v, x and z are not part of the native alphabet, although those sounds occur and can be represented by letter combinations; loanwords are respelled to fit, so English school became cukul.

Several letters do a different job from English. C is always the ch of church, which is why the language's own name is spelled Acoli while English writes Acholi. J is the j of jam, g is always hard as in go, and r is a tapped or rolled r. Ny is one sound, the ny of canyon, the same as Spanish ñ.

The one letter that needs a special character is ŋ, called eng or "ng with a tail". It is the sound at the end of English sing, but in Acholi it can also begin a word, as in ŋeyo (to know). Unicode encodes it as U+014B for small ŋ and U+014A for capital Ŋ, in the Latin Extended-A block.

What the spelling leaves out: tone and vowel quality

Acholi is a tonal language: the pitch of a syllable can change the meaning of a word. The standard spelling does not mark tone at all, so there are no accented letters to hunt for; readers tell words apart from context, and dictionaries and linguists add tone marks only when they need to.

The same goes for the vowels. Like other Luo languages, Acholi has vowel harmony between two series of vowels, often described as tense and lax, but the alphabet writes both series with the same five letters a e i o u. In spellings that use ŋ, an Acholi text looks almost like plain A to Z, with ŋ as its only non-A–Z letter.

How to type ŋ and Ŋ on a keyboard, iPhone or Android

The quickest way is to copy ŋ and Ŋ from this page. In Microsoft Word on Windows, type 014B and press Alt+X for ŋ, or 014A and Alt+X for Ŋ. On a Mac, add the Unicode Hex Input source in Keyboard settings, hold Option and type 014B. In HTML, write ŋ and Ŋ, or the numeric forms ŋ and Ŋ.

Most phone keyboards do not show ŋ on a long-press of n, so set up a text replacement once: on an iPhone in Settings → General → Keyboard → Text Replacement, on Android in your keyboard's personal dictionary or shortcuts. Paste ŋ as the phrase and pick a short trigger such as ngg. The Peace Corps Acholi course writes this sound as ng in examples such as ngeyo, so ng is also an established spelling.

Watch the look-alikes: ŋ is not Greek η (eta), and not ɲ (n with a left hook), which some linguists use for the ny sound. Pasting the wrong one breaks searching and sorting.

Where Acholi is spoken

Acholi is the language of the Acholi people of northern Uganda, in the districts around Gulu, Kitgum, Pader, Agago, Amuru, Nwoya, Lamwo and Omoro, and across the border in South Sudan, mainly in Magwi County. Unicode's CLDR estimates about 1.8 million speakers in Uganda; the South Sudanese community adds to that.

It belongs to the Luo branch of the Nilotic languages. Its closest neighbours are Lango (Uganda) and Alur, which an Acholi speaker largely understands, and it is a cousin of Dholuo, the Luo language of Kenya, which writes the same ŋ sound as ng'. Ugandans who speak Acholi usually also use English, the country's official language, and many speak Swahili or Ganda; the Uganda and South Sudan collections have the flags and the country emoji.