Rutooro Language

Rutooro is the Bantu language of the Batooro, the people of the Tooro kingdom in western Uganda. As in its neighbours, the prefixes do the naming: one person is a Mutooro, the people are the Batooro, the land is Tooro and the language is Rutooro, or Orutooro with its full prefix. Older English writing spells the name with a single o, Toro, and reference books list the language as Tooro, which is where its ISO code ttj comes from.

It is written in the Latin alphabet with no accented letters. Q and x are left out of the grid here because Rutooro words do not use them; they appear only in foreign names. Sounds that English spells with two letters are written as pairs here too, such as ny, the ny of canyon. Rutooro has lost lexical tone, though high pitch falls predictably on the penultimate syllable of each phonological phrase; its standard spelling does not mark tone.

Vowel length does matter, and it is written by doubling the letter: Tooro, Batooro, Akiiki, Amooti. Dropping the second o is the most common slip when people write the kingdom's name in English. In Rutooro, r and l spell context-conditioned realizations of one underlying liquid: Rutooro and Kabarole contain r, while Olimi, Kabalega and the word Webale contain l.

The apostrophe in Rutooro words

Beyond A to Z, the one extra character a Rutooro text regularly uses is the apostrophe. When a short linking word that ends in a vowel meets a word that begins with one, the first vowel drops and an apostrophe stands in its place, which is why Rutooro writing has forms like w', y' and ky' joined to the next word.

Either the straight apostrophe ' or the curly one ’ is fine. Some apps automatically convert straight apostrophes to curly ones when Smart Punctuation is enabled. For quotations, Rutooro texts often borrow English practice: double curly quotes “ ” outside and single ones ‘ ’ inside.

How to type Rutooro on a keyboard or phone

Rutooro needs no special keyboard: a standard English layout on a computer, iPhone or Android types every letter, and doubled vowels are just the same key pressed twice. The only characters worth reaching for are the curly quotes. On Windows, hold Alt and type 0146 on the number pad for ’, 0145 for ‘, 0147 for “ and 0148 for ”. On a Mac, Option+Shift+] gives ’, Option+] gives ‘, Option+[ gives “ and Option+Shift+[ gives ”.

In HTML, write ’, ‘, “ and ”. In Numbers on iPhone, Smart Punctuation converts straight quotation marks to curly ones as you type.

Where Rutooro is spoken: the Tooro kingdom in Uganda

Rutooro is the language of Tooro in western Uganda, with Fort Portal as its main town and the districts around it, such as Kabarole, Bunyangabu, Kyenjojo, Kyegegwa and Kamwenge, as its heartland, under the snowy Rwenzori Mountains 🏔️ on the border with Congo. Unicode's CLDR lists about 940,000 as Tooro's literate, functional population in Uganda 🇺🇬.

Tooro is a kingdom with its own king, the Omukama 👑. It broke away from Bunyoro-Kitara around 1830 under the prince Kaboyo Olimi I, was abolished with Uganda's other kingdoms in 1967 and restored in 1993. The present Omukama is Edward Rukidi Nyabongo I, chosen in 2026 after the death of his predecessor Oyo Nyimba Kabamba Iguru Rukidi IV. The land around Fort Portal is green with tea estates 🫖, crater lakes and Kibale Forest, famous for its chimpanzees and other primates 🐒.

Rutooro is very close to Runyoro, the language of Bunyoro, and the two share one written standard, Runyoro-Rutooro, used for the Bible, Catholic and Anglican hymn books and school teaching. Both belong to the same group of Bantu languages as Runyankore and Rukiga, which are taught together with them at Makerere University as Runyakitara, and Ruhaya across the border in Tanzania. Prices are written in Ugandan shillings, which have no Unicode sign of their own: people write USh 5,000 or UGX 5,000. The Runyankore (Nyankole) and Rukiga (Chiga) collections cover the closest relatives that have pages here, the Uganda collection has the country's emoji, and the Luganda, Acholi and Masaaba collections cover other languages of Uganda.

Rutooro words, greetings and empaako names

The morning greeting is Oraire ota?, how did you sleep, and later in the day Osiibire ota?, how has your day been. Thanks are Webale, or Webale muno for thank you very much, and a word for love is Nkukunda, I love you.

What sets Rutooro greetings apart is the empaako, a traditional praise name given to children in addition to their given and family names. There are twelve: Apuuli, Araali, Bbala, Acaali, Akiiki, Adyeri, Amooti, Atwoki, Abbooki, Ateenyi, Abwoli and Okaali, used exclusively for kings. Calling someone by their empaako, as in Oraire ota, Akiiki?, is a mark of respect and warmth, and in 2013 UNESCO put the empaako tradition of the Batooro, Banyoro and their neighbours on its list of intangible heritage in need of urgent safeguarding.

All of these are typed with plain letters, so people looking for Rutooro words and their meanings mostly need the meanings rather than special characters; the doubled vowels are the part to get right.