Nyole dialect (Uganda)

Nyole
Lunyole
Native to	Uganda
Region	Tororo District
Native speakers	340,000 (2002 census)
Language family	Niger–Congo Atlantic–Congo Benue–Congo Bantoid Bantu Northeast Bantu Great Lakes Bantu Masaba–Luhya (J.30) Nyole
Language codes
ISO 639-3
Glottolog	nyol1238
Guthrie code	JE.35
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Nyole (also LoNyole, Lunyole, Nyuli) is a Bantu language spoken by the Luhya people in Tororo District, Uganda near Lake Kyoga. There is 61% lexical similarity with a related but different Nyole language in Kenya.

Nyole has series of voiceless, voiced, and prenasalized stops. /w/ is labio-velar.

Nyole has an interesting development from Proto-Bantu *p → Nyole /ŋ/. Schadeberg (1989) connects this sound change to rhinoglottophilia, where the sound change developed first as *[p] → [ɸ] → [h]. Then, given the acoustic similarity of [h] and breathy voice to nasalization, the sound change progressed as [h] → [h̃] → [ŋ]. The velar place of articulation development is due to velar nasals being the least perceptible of the nasals and its marginal status in (pre-)Nyole and other Bantu languages. In closely related neighboring languages, *p developed variously into /h/ or /w/ or was deleted.

This historical development results in so-called "crazy" alternations, like /n/ + /ŋ/ resulting in /p/ as in the following:

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