Lesson 6 : Vowels of Lulogooli

 To start the lesson, please memorize this vowel chart. 

Do you have any words that start with the indicated vowel? Please write them in your notebook.

...

short and long Logooli vowel sounds and English word sound examples

Discussion

We identified that we use five vowels (visaanduki) in writing of Lulogooli. They are a, e, i, o and u. 

Mainly a vowel is joined to a consonant to make a syllable. Example of Lulogooli syllables are Ba, Twe, Nyo and Ndwi among others. 

Each vowel of Lulogooli has one or more uses in writing. In the example of syllable “Ndwe” above, vowel “e” is only used to give the syllable a sound ending with “e”. 

Sometimes a vowel can form a word by itself, e.g “a!”, which shows surprise. 

In the formation of a word, a vowel can have a specific purpose apart from other letters in the word. In a word as “akoli”, the vowel “a” is a pronoun for “she” or “he”. “Akoli” means “s/he did”.

For every word of Lulogooli, it must end with a vowel. And in lesson 5 we had termed Vowels as “Visaanduki”, from producing a sound. 

Leaving the mouth open, the vowels make words of Lulogooli be open ended. That another word can always be added to another till we have a very long unending sentence. 

The vowels of Lulogooli can also make a combination. The most common combination is by doubling the vowel as aa, ee, ii, oo, uu. 

The doubling combination is known as long vowel sound. This makes the single vowels be known as short vowel sounds in words. 

A word as “Ululogooli” can be said to have both short and long vowel “o” sound. The short “o” vowel sound is Ulul“o”gooli and the long  “oo” vowel sound is Ululog“oo”li. 

Other vowel combinations as ai, ou or ea do not form long vowel sounds. They only serve a grammatical purpose because Lulogooli is agglutinative. 

Agglutinative simply means “working like glue”. That is bringing together several meaningful parts of a word. A random word in Lulogooli can be a sentence if translated to English. 

A word as “Avaitili” means “S/he killed for them”. The coming together of “a+i=ai” in the word is from combining pronoun “va” for “they” and verb “it.” for “kill”. 

Further reading for vowels

To add on the use of short and long vowels, they make Lulogooli melodious by bringing in a tonal aspect. Any word can be slowed or rushed as the speaker wishes.

It is in writing and being formal that vowels can be termed short or long. A word as “mala” (finish) is differentiated from “maala” (make sick) by long vowel sound in writing. 

The doubling is not to say the length is two times the short vowel. It can be even longer than two times or less.

It is sometimes even difficult to know the length of double sounds, some preferring a single letter and others writing double or more. Words as “kusingila” and “kusiingila” would pass to mean “to stand”.

Whereas doubled vowel may be difficult in some cases, those that combine with different vowels also have their unique characteristics. 

 In some instances the combinations are converted to other letters. Combinations as of ua, ue, ui, ou and uu are spoken as “<wa, we, wi, wo, wu>”. 

Also the vowel combinations ia, ie, ii, io and uu are spoken as “<ya, ye, yi, yo, yu>”. Though care should be taken that in writing the vowel combinations are maintained. 

Maintaining the initial combination prevents grammar issues. A word as “Luana” to mean “childish” of vowel combination ua is spoken as <lwana>. If written as “Lwana” there will be two grammar mistakes. 

The first grammar mistake is to lose the lu+ana order of agglutination. The second is to form a word that is similar to another in Lulogooli. Word “lwana” is a verb that means “fight”.

If one is to write, “those of childishness” and separate it from “those of fight”, the words should be Avaluana and Avalwana. This clarity in grammar comes when vowels are not elided. 

To elide is to be ‘lost’ or be ‘reduced’ to a different letter. In the example combinations above, we get two letters, “y” and “w”. They are also called semivowels. 

It is not advised in Ululogooli structure to drop a vowel and replace it with a semi-vowel if it is serving a grammatical role. By serving a grammatical role means being part of one of the agglutinating parts of a word. 

By not serving a grammatical role we can have a word example, “luala” to mean, “get sick”. The verb is lual.a and the two vowels u+a are part of the inseparable body of the word - root. 

In such a scenario, the u+a can go through the elision process and birth w+a=wa. The word “lwala” in this context is justified, alongside “luala” to also mean “get sick”. 

For combination ai, ae, ai, ao and au, speech drops the first and gains the second as long; aa, ee, ii, oo and uu. This can be confused for the doubled long vowel in a previous word example, “Avaitii” – ‘S/he killed for them’. 

The word “Avaitili” is agglutination two parts: a pronoun “va” and a verb root, “.it.”. When the word is synthesized, the “a+i” begets <“ii”> in speech for word “Aviitii”. This backpedalling speech phenomena is good for language discussion but structure does recommend writing from left to right. 

Advance reading for Vowels

A part from “finish”, the word “mala” given in an example above can also mean “intestines”. The meaning will depend on how you speak the vowel “a”, m(a)la. 

If the “a” is articulated high (rising), the word will be “intestines”. If low, the word will be “finish”.

The phonetic transcription for the two above is  <málá> – small intestines and <màlà> – finish. This gives vowel letter “a” two pitches; low and high sonority. 

It applies for the rest of the vowels too where one is high and the other low, yet articulated at the same point. They can be listed as: á(à), é(è), í(ì), ó(ò), ú(ù) with word examples given as in the table. 

Attention is brought for <í(ì)> where the low sonority is phonetically represented as /ɪ/. If <í(ì)> is rewritten, it will be <í(ɪ)>. 

A second vowel letter is ú(ù), whose second low seniority begets phonetic description /ʊ/. If <ú(ù)> is rewritten, it is <ú(ʊ)> for both low and high vowel pitches. (ʊ) can also be symbolized as /fu/

The two low pitch vowels <ɪ> and <ʊ> have somewhat contributed to the claim that Lulogooli has seven vowels. Perhaps because the low or high pitches of “a”, “e” and “o” were not considered. 

In articulation starting from the front to the back of the mouth, the vowels follow the order; á,(à), é,(è), í,(ɪ), ó,(ò), ú,(ʊ). While listing by pitch from high to lowest the order is; í,(ɪ), é,(è), ó,(ò), á,(à), ú,(ʊ).

That also would go for double vowels thus: á á,(à à), é é,(è è), í í,( ɪ ɪ), ó ó,(ò ò), ú ú,(ʊ ʊ).

Exercise

1. In your notebook write the five vowels 
2. Write down the five double vowels and pronounce them alongside the short vowels in Question 1.
3. Write any five words with long vowel sounds
4. Use the tonic graph to pronounce vowel sounds. Notice the place of articulation in the mouth.