Lusoga Alphabet

Lusoga (Olusoga in the language itself) is written in Latin script. Uganda’s NCDC guide lists 34 Lusoga letters, including ŋ, doubled vowels and consonant digraphs such as dh, gh, nh and th. Standard spelling does not mark tone with accents, but ŋ is not on an ordinary English keyboard.

The standard Lusoga alphabet does not include q or x, though unaltered foreign names may contain them; native spellings use a, e, i, o, u and the language’s own consonants. Like its neighbour Luganda, Lusoga is a Bantu language with tone, but everyday spelling does not mark tone at all, so there are no accents to learn.

The symbol grid above holds the 52 English A–Z capital and small letter forms in alphabetical order, plus the curly quotation marks and apostrophe used in Ugandan print, the 🇺🇬 flag, and three emoji people use for Busoga: 🍌 for matooke, 🥁 for its drum music and 👑 for the Kyabazinga.

Lusoga spelling: double letters, c and the apostrophe

Lusoga marks contrastive long vowels by doubling their vowel letters. Doubled consonants also occur, but some spellings represent different consonant sounds rather than just length, such as b versus bb. CLDR’s Soga month names include doubled letters in Maayi (May), Juuni (June), Julaayi (July), Sebuttemba (September), Okitobba (October). Saturday is Olomukaaga and Zulu is Oluzzulu. When you copy Lusoga text, keep every doubled letter: it is part of the word, not a typo.

In the NCDC-approved Lusoga orthography, c is included to accommodate abbreviations and is not otherwise used in native words. The apostrophe ’ marks a dropped vowel where two words are said as one: the Tanzanian shilling is Silingi ey’eTanzaniya and the US dollar Doola ey’Amerika. Print uses the curly ’; a straight ' from the keyboard is read the same way.

Prefixes do a lot of work. Olusoga or Lusoga is the language, a Musoga is one person, the Basoga are the people and Busoga is their land. Language names all take the same prefix: Olungereza is English, Olufalansa French, Olusipanya Spanish and Oluwarabu Arabic.

How to type Lusoga on a keyboard or phone

Most Lusoga spelling can be typed on a standard English keyboard, but the standard letter ŋ is not on it; curly quotes and apostrophes may also need copying or a shortcut. On Windows, hold Alt and type 0147 for “, 0148 for ”, 0145 for ‘ and 0146 for ’ on the number pad; on a Mac, Option+[ gives “, Option+Shift+[ gives ”, Option+] gives ‘ and Option+Shift+] gives ’. On iPhone, Smart Punctuation can turn straight quotation marks into curly ones when it is enabled.

The Ugandan shilling has no Unicode sign; it is written USh (code UGX). CLDR's Soga locale puts it after the number, 1,000 USh, and calls it Silingi eya Yuganda. Dates run day name, day, month, year: Owokusatu, 21 Okitobba 2026.

Where the Lusoga language is spoken

Lusoga is the language of the Basoga, one of Uganda's largest peoples, in Busoga, the region of eastern Uganda bounded by the Nile on the west, Lake Kyoga to the north and Lake Victoria to the south. Its main town is Jinja, where the Nile leaves Lake Victoria. Busoga is a cultural kingdom whose leader carries the title Kyabazinga. CLDR estimates about 2.6 million speakers, all in Uganda; many also speak English, Uganda's official language, or Luganda.

Lusoga's closest relative is Luganda, spoken just across the Nile in Buganda, and the two share much of their vocabulary. It is a cousin of Nyankole, Chiga, Kinyarwanda and Swahili, all Bantu languages, while Teso and Acoli, also spoken in Uganda, are Nilotic languages from another family. Each has its own collection, and the Uganda collection gathers the flag and the country's emoji.