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Periodical article Periodical article Leiden University catalogue Leiden University catalogue WorldCat catalogue WorldCat
Title:The Problem of the Luo
Author:Wrigley, C.C.
Year:1981
Periodical:History in Africa
Volume:8
Pages:219-246
Language:English
Geographic term:Uganda
Subjects:Luo
migration
Luo language
Peoples of Africa (Ethnic Groups)
History and Exploration
External link:https://www.jstor.org/stable/3171517
Abstract:The Lwo language was spoken as a mother tongue at the end of the colonial period by some two and a half million people scattered over a vast area of the Upper Nile basin. Despite their large numbers, however, the Luo form an enclave among peoples of quite different speech; the main continuous block of Lwo-speakers is in northern Uganda. This peculiar configuration, very different from the normal pattern of linguistic fragmentation in sub-saharan Africa, must be the residuum of an unusual event or series of events. Languages cannot travel unless people carry them; and so it is reasonable to assume that the Lwo-speakers of a few centuries ago lived as a compact community, which developed an exceptional capacity both for the incorporation of aliens and the propagation of its own genes. If the diaspora can be accurately charted and its dynamics understood it will be possible to inject some actual history into the speculative process-models, the evolutionary schemata, the kinglists, and the catalogues of surviving artifacts with which the student of pre-nineteenth-century East Africa has usually had to be content. Notes.
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