Ebook: A Short Acholi-English and English-Acholi Vocabulary

W. Boyd & Co. (Printers) Ltd. Nairobi, 1980. - 50 p.A Study of the Acooli Lambíate " by 1-r. J. 1'. Crazzolara is the standard work on Acoli, and the vocabulary it contains is by far the most comprehensive that has so far been published. It has 'the disadvantage, however, from the beginner's point of view, of usin;; strictly phonetic spelling in place of The spelling which is in ceryda use; furthermore, it lacks an English-Acoli section.
My aim in compiling the present vocabulary has not been ic produce a dictionary, but merely to give the common meanings oí common words, in order to assist English-speaking people who are starting to learn Acoli, and Acoli who are learning English. I have drawn freely upon Fr. Crazzolara's work, and I am most grateful to him for giving me permission to do so.
The " standard orthography " of Acoli, in so far as there is such a thing, is based on the recommendations of the committee which met in Uganda in 1947 to consider the orthography of Southern Nilotic languages. The work of this committee did much tc standardise spelling, but certain minor differences still exist between the systems employed by different authorities, and the user of a vocabulary must be on the look out for these. Some writers, for example, like to double letters in order to follow the pronunciation more closely; thus the word I have given as yc will often be found as yee. The vowels o and u are not always easy to distinguish in Acoli; thus we find one author writing kum where another would write kom. I have written o throughout as the final vowel of the infinitive of " transitive form " verbs. Many writers prefer to use u instead of o. when the stem vowel is also u, in order to follow th-pronunciation; thus tuku, nyutu are often found in place of luko. nyuto.