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 ulu.baaho and i.baakoola, where a period separates prefixes from the root and the root is in bold. When you want to look up a word, look for the root in bold. After this there is a phonetic annotation which indicates how the word is pronounced ([ʊrʊbááho, ɪbáákoora]). 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 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: 

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 as r, following tradition it will be spelled as l. In the parts of the dictionary with actual pronunciation, 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. That means that certain consonant distinctions are not kept ([ny] versus [ɲ]), the vowels [ɪ, ʊ] are not marked, and tone is left out. Spelling is lightly augmented with an apostrophe. The apostrophe is used for two purposes: (1) the nasal [ŋ] as in eng’oongmbe ‘cow’, just as in Swahili, and (2) to indicate the typical omission of a vowel, for example um’bano ‘knife’, l’laande ‘decorative plant’ – this is done inconsistently in writing Logoori. Omission of vowels is a highly-variable feature of the language, but in two contexts there is near-universal vowel omission. First, the vowels i, u are deleted in the prefixes mu, mi when the following consonant is 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 second near-universal vowel deletion is that u,i in a prefix is deleted between l’s, for example ililooto → il’looto ‘dream’, ululimi → ul’limi ‘tongue’. Apostrophe is used to indicate that a vowel has been deleted. This deletion of vowels 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. However, 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 there is deletion sometimes in ‘bread’ but deletion happens almost always in ‘Bukusu’. 

There are many features of pronunciation which are not represented in the present spelling (which is mainly a systematization of most-common spelling practices). But the dictionary has both spelling and a pronunciation key.