About spelling versus pronunciation

The first thing to understand is that the dictionary uses both “spelling” and a phonetic writing system intended to inform the reader about the difference in the vowels of the roots umulitu ‘forest’ and ikilitu ‘chest’. The first column in each entry is a modified spelling which lists ‘lumber’ and ‘cane’ as ulubaaho and ibaakoola, where the root and any suffixes are in bold. When you want to look up a word, look for the root in bold. After this is a phonetic annotation labeled “pron”, which adds some details about how the word is pronounced ([ʊlʊbááho, ɪbáákoola], noting tones and vowel quality not included in spelling. Looking up a word is primarily based on spelling, therefore you do not need to know whether the vowel spelled i (or perhaps e) is in fact phonetic [i] or [ɪ]. Therefore, first we consider how Logoori is spelled.

Words in Logoori have been spelled in many ways, starting with the Litu & Rees Bible translations. The usual practice is to spell things the way they would be in Swahili, which works when the sounds of a Logoori word are just those found in Swahili as well. But Logoori has more sounds than Swahili does, in fact very few words of Logoori are composed of just the sounds of Swahili. Swahili does not have tone or distinctive vowel length (there are words like choo with a double vowel which have another explanation), but Logoori does have both. The matter of vowel length is standardly solved in Logoori spelling by doubling the letter of long vowels, however, not everybody does this, so ihiili ‘clan’ might also be spelled ihili. Because there is a difference in noun class, a person would know that ihili is ‘clan’ and ilihili is ‘puff adder’. But there are plenty of cases where real confusion can exist if one does not write long vowels differently from short vowels. Even though people often leave out an indication of vowel length, this work will always follow the practice of doubling vowels which are long. However: because there is often uncertainty as to whether a certain vowel is long or short, in sorting roots, long vowels are treated the same as short vowels, so roots are presented in the order:

ikibaga	‘cat’
ibahati	‘luck’
ulubaaho	‘lumber’
ibaakoola	‘cane’
ikibanana	‘banana’

as though aa is spelled a.

Another spelling matter is the fact that conventionally, the second root consonant in ihiili is spelled with l, but its pronunciation is more like r, and some people write l vs. r indiscriminately. In this work, even though that consonant is most generally pronounced more like Swahili r, following tradition it will be spelled as l. In the parts of the dictionary with actual pronunciation (to the right of the entry), you will find r and l, depending on the pronunciation of the individual.

What spelling conventions are followed in this dictionary? The basic principle is to use only ordinary letters a-z plus apostrophe. That means that certain consonant distinctions are not kept ([ny] versus [ɲ] but that is complicated), the vowels [ɪ, ʊ] are not marked, and tone is left out. The apostrophe is used for two purposes: (1) the nasal [ŋ] as in eng’oongmbe ‘cow’, just as in Swahili, and (2) to indicate typical omission of a vowel, for example um’bano ‘knife’, l’laande ‘decorative plant’ or ul’limi ‘tongue’. This is done inconsistently in writing Logoori, however here vowel elision is always represented in th spelled form. Examples of vowel elision are that the vowels i, u are deleted in the prefixes mu, mi followed by v, m, p, b, therefore umu-vugusu → um’bugusu ‘Bukusu’, umu-fuundi → um’fuundi ‘craftsman’, umu-moosi → um’moosi ‘left hand’, imi-piila → im’piila ‘balls’. This reduction usually also causes v to change to b. The other vowel deletion is that these vowels deleted between l’s, for example ililooto → il’looto ‘dream’, ululimi → ul’limi ‘tongue’. The deletion rule is discussed in more detail in the grammar. What is important to know for the dictionary is that because these vowels are almost always deleted, they are not included in the spelling (and I do not always know which vowel has been deleted). Another vowel deletion that occurs is that u in the prefix mu may be deleted optionally, therefore umugadi ‘bread’ is sometimes pronounced um’gadi. The difference between deletion in um’gadi and um’bugusu is that deletion only happens sometimes in ‘bread’, so it is not “how words are usually pronounced”.

Given that there is not one single universal spelling practice, here are the spelling rules that were followed in creating the dictionary. Each sound of Logoori is written with the same letters as the corresponding Swahili sound – p is p in Logoori, Swahili, and English. The vowels [e o a] are the same in Swahili and Logoori writing. Logoori has [i ɪ u ʊ] but Swahili only has [i u]. Logoori spelling simply does not indicate that there are two vowels spelled i and two vowels spelled u. Logoori also has long vowels, written as double vowels, which is part of the spelling, even though it is lacking in Swahili.

The consonant sh can come from sy (kusya ~ kusha ‘to grind’), hy (kʊhyʊ́ʊha ‘to be warm’) and in some cases sh, the latter being in words borrowed into Logoori such as ɪmíísheni ‘mission’. Most speakers are aware of the original consonant even when they use sh for sy or hy; it may be necessary to search all possibilities to find a word, when looking for a word that you pronounce with sh. Remember that the word might simply not be included.

As mentioned, the letter l stands for a range of different phonetic sounds, r, l, ɭ, ll, and they all reduce to l vs ll. There are two kinds of “ny”, depending on your dialect. There is ny as in inyama ‘meat’, which sounds like the Swahili word with a vowel before it for some speakers, but the same word can be pronounced with a “flat tongue” by many speakers. In the phonetic parts of the dictionary, the flat-tongue ny is [ɲ] and the Swahili-like ny is written [ny]. The many pronunciations can be systematized with a few rules. (1) spelled ny is the one pronounced [ny] or [ɲ] depending on the individual. (2) There is also n’ny which is pronounced as [ny] or [nny] by “ny-speakers” (not ɲ-speakers). (3) Some words have short ny which is never flat-tongue ny, for example ʊvʊ́niegéli ‘itch’. The quality of the n itself is different from what you hear in kʊgávʊlannya ‘to divide up’. This is spelled with i plus vowel, not y.

Finally, the phonetic parts of the dictionary include tone marks. The two marks are “accent” and “downstep”, as in [líˈpéera] ‘guava’. The (acute) accent on [lí] and [pé] means that those parts have higher pitch – H(igh) tone. The dowstep mark here is ˈ and comes between two H tones to indicate that the second tone is a half-step lower than the first tone. The lack of accent on [ra] means that the last syllable has a L(ow) tone. In the combination [pée], the entire syllable starts high and falls down, so we describe this as a falling tone, which is different from the word [epééji] ‘page’ which has a long level-H tone.