Luganda Alphabet

Luganda (Oluganda in the language itself) is written in the Latin alphabet in this order: A B C D E F G I J K L M N NY Ŋ O P R S T U V W Y Z. That is 24 single letters plus ny, a pair of letters for one sound, which comes right after n. The letters h, q and x are not part of the main alphabet, though h appears in Luganda exclamations such as Hoo!.

The five vowels a e i o u sound roughly as in Spanish or Italian, and w and y work as semivowels. Most consonants are what an English reader expects, with a few rules to learn: c is always the ch of church, j the j of jam, g is usually hard as in go, but j-like before i or y, and ny is one sound, the ny of canyon, the same as Spanish ñ, as in nnyo (very).

L and r are one and the same sound in Luganda, and the spelling decides between them by position: r is written after the vowels e and i, l everywhere else. That is why erinnya (name) has an r while Luganda has an l.

Ŋ, the one special letter of Luganda

The only character a Luganda writer needs beyond A–Z is ŋ, called eng or "ng with a tail". It writes a single sound, the ng at the end of English sing, which Luganda can also put at the start of a word. Unicode encodes it as U+014B for small ŋ and U+014A for capital Ŋ, in the Latin Extended-A block.

It matters because Luganda also has the plain pair n + g, pronounced as in finger, for example in engoma (drum). Ŋ and ng therefore spell different things. When ŋ cannot be typed, many people write ng' with an apostrophe instead, which readers understand, but ŋ is the standard spelling.

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

Double letters: long vowels and doubled consonants

Luganda marks long vowels with doubled letters where their length is not predictable, and doubles consonants to mark their longer sound: abaana (children), matooke (steamed green bananas), Ssebo (sir), kkumi (ten), Webale nnyo (thank you very much). A doubled ny is written nny, as in Nnyabo (madam), and a doubled ŋ is ŋŋ.

Luganda is also a tonal language, but standard spelling leaves tone unmarked. There are no accented letters to look for: everything apart from ŋ is on any keyboard, and the doubling is simply typed twice.

How to type 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.

On a phone, see whether your keyboard app offers a Luganda (Ganda) layout; if it does not, set up a text replacement once. On an iPhone it is in Settings → General → Keyboard → Text Replacement, on Android in your keyboard's personal dictionary or shortcuts. Paste ŋ as the phrase and choose a short trigger such as ngg.

Where the Ganda language is spoken

Luganda is the language of the Baganda, the people of the Kingdom of Buganda in central Uganda, around Kampala, Entebbe, Mukono, Mityana and Masaka. The prefixes tell the family apart: Luganda is the language, a Muganda is one person, the Baganda are the people and Buganda is the land. Unicode's CLDR estimates about 6.4 million speakers in Uganda, and it is also widely used as a second language by Ugandans of other backgrounds, above all in Kampala, where it is the everyday language of markets, taxis and radio.

Uganda's official languages are English and Swahili, and Luganda sits beside them in schools, churches, newspapers and music. It is a Bantu language; its closest relative is Soga (Lusoga), spoken just to the east, and it is a cousin of Nyankole, Chiga, Kinyarwanda and Swahili, which have their own collections, as does the Uganda collection with the flag and the country's emoji.