Acholi is a language primarily spoken by the Acholi people in the districts of Gulu

Gulu District

Gulu District is a district in Northern Uganda. The district is named after its chief municipal, administrative and commercial center, the town of Gulu.-Location:...

, Kitgum

Kitgum

Kitgum is a municipality in Kitgum District, in Northern Uganda. The town is administered by Kitgum Town Council, an Urban Local Government within Kitgum District Administration...

 and Pader

Pader District

Pader District is a district in Northern Uganda. It is named after Pader, the chief municipal, administrative and commercial town in the district, where the district headquarters are located.-Location:...

, a region known as Acholiland in northern Uganda

Uganda

Uganda , officially the Republic of Uganda, is a landlocked country in East Africa. Uganda is also known as the "Pearl of Africa". It is bordered on the east by Kenya, on the north by South Sudan, on the west by the Democratic Republic of the Congo, on the southwest by Rwanda, and on the south by...

. Acholi is also spoken in the southern part of the Opari District

Torit

-Location:The town is located in Torit County, Eastern Equatoria State, in the southeastern part of South Sudan, close to the International border with the Republic of Uganda. Its location lies approximately , by road, east of Juba, the capital and largest city in that country...

 of South Sudan

South Sudan

South Sudan , officially the Republic of South Sudan, is a landlocked country located in the Sahel region of northeastern Africa. It is also part of the North Africa UN sub-region. Its current capital is Juba, which is also its largest city; the capital city is planned to be moved to the more...

. As of 1996 there were reported approximately 773,800 Acholi speakers in the world. However this has gradually grown to over 800,000. Song of Lawino

Song of Lawino

Song of Lawino is an epic poem written by Ugandan poet Okot p'Bitek. First published in 1966 in Luo it was quickly translated into other languages, including English...

and its sequel, Song of Ocol, well known among African literature, were written in Acholi by Okot p'Bitek

Okot p'Bitek

Okot p'Bitek was a Ugandan poet, who achieved wide international recognition for Song of Lawino, a long poem dealing with the tribulations of a rural African wife whose husband has taken up urban life and wishes everything to be westernised...

.

Acholi is one of the Luo languages

Luo languages

The Nilotic Luo languages, or Lwoian, are a dozen languages spoken by the Luo peoples in an area ranging from southern Sudan via Uganda to southern Kenya, with Dholuo extending into northern Tanzania and Alur into the Democratic Republic of the Congo. They form one of the two branches of Western...

, of the Western Nilotic

Western Nilotic languages

The Western Nilotic languages are one of the three primary branches of the Nilotic languages, themselves belonging to the Eastern Sudanic subfamily of Nilo-Saharan...

 branch of Nilo-Saharan

Nilo-Saharan languages

The Nilo-Saharan languages are a proposed family of African languages spoken by some 50 million people, mainly in the upper parts of the Chari and Nile rivers , including historic Nubia, north of where the two tributaries of Nile meet...

. Acholi, Alur

Alur language

Alur is spoken in northwestern Uganda and northeastern Democratic Republic of the Congo by the Alur people.Dialects*Jokot*Jonam *Mambisa*Wanyoro- Phonetics :VowelsAlur has 9 vowels....

 and Lango

Lango language (Uganda)

Lango is a Western Nilotic language of the Luo branch, spoken by the Langi people in Uganda. It is mostly spoken in Lango sub-region, in the Northern Region. Spoken by approximately 1.8 million speakers, it makes up for about five percent of the population of Uganda...

 have between 84 and 90 per cent of their vocabulary in common and thus are mutually intelligible.

Sounds

Acholi has vowel harmony

Vowel harmony

Vowel harmony is a type of long-distance assimilatory phonological process involving vowels that occurs in some languages. In languages with vowel harmony, there are constraints on which vowels may be found near each other....

: all vowels in a word have to belong to a single class (e.g. [kojo] the cold vs. [kɔjɔ] to separate). There are two sets of five vowels, distinguished by the feature [+/-ATR].

[-ATR] vowels in Luo

.	Front Front vowel A front vowel is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a front vowel is that the tongue is positioned as far in front as possible in the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant. Front vowels are sometimes also...	Central Central vowel A central vowel is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a central vowel is that the tongue is positioned halfway between a front vowel and a back vowel...	Back Back vowel A back vowel is a type of vowel sound used in spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a back vowel is that the tongue is positioned as far back as possible in the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant. Back vowels are sometimes also called dark...
Near-close Near-close vowel A near-close vowel is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a near-close vowel is that the tongue is positioned similarly to a close vowel, but slightly less constricted. Near-close vowels are sometimes described as lax variants of the fully close vowels...	ɪ		ʊ
Open-mid Open-mid vowel An open-mid vowel is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of an open-mid vowel is that the tongue is positioned two-thirds of the way from an open vowel to a mid vowel...	ɛ		ɔ
Open Open vowel An open vowel is defined as a vowel sound in which the tongue is positioned as far as possible from the roof of the mouth. Open vowels are sometimes also called low vowels in reference to the low position of the tongue...		ɒ

[+ATR] vowels in Luo

.	Front Front vowel A front vowel is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a front vowel is that the tongue is positioned as far in front as possible in the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant. Front vowels are sometimes also...	Central Central vowel A central vowel is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a central vowel is that the tongue is positioned halfway between a front vowel and a back vowel...	Back Back vowel A back vowel is a type of vowel sound used in spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a back vowel is that the tongue is positioned as far back as possible in the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant. Back vowels are sometimes also called dark...
Close Close vowel A close vowel is a type of vowel sound used in many spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a close vowel is that the tongue is positioned as close as possible to the roof of the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant.This term is prescribed by the...	i		u
Close-mid Close-mid vowel A close-mid vowel is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a close-mid vowel is that the tongue is positioned two-thirds of the way from a close vowel to a mid vowel...	e		o
Open Open vowel An open vowel is defined as a vowel sound in which the tongue is positioned as far as possible from the roof of the mouth. Open vowels are sometimes also called low vowels in reference to the low position of the tongue...		a

Acholi is a tonal language

Tone (linguistics)

Tone is the use of pitch in language to distinguish lexical or grammatical meaning—that is, to distinguish or inflect words. All verbal languages use pitch to express emotional and other paralinguistic information, and to convey emphasis, contrast, and other such features in what is called...

. Thus, some words may be distinguished by tone alone, e.g. bèl (low) 'wrinkled' vs. bél (high) 'corn' and kàl (low) 'place enclosed by a palisade' vs. kál (high) 'millet'. Tone furthermore plays a role in verb conjugation.

External links

• Acholi-English and English-Acoli dictionary
• Ethnologue report on Acholi
• Audio recordings of Acholi
• PanAfrican L10n page on Acholi
• IRIN Radio – Radio programming from northern Uganda in Luo