[3][4] The speech patterns of Ugandan languages strongly influence spoken English.
The Bantu languages spoken in southern Uganda tend not to have consonants sounded alone without a vowel in the syllable.
Some Ugandan English words have a peculiar meaning widely understood within Uganda but mystifying to foreigners.
The best known example is probably to extend, which in Uganda means move over on a seat to make room for someone else.
A basement is called a godown, but the usual meaning of warehouse is also known in Uganda as proper English.
It is often a payment in part to cover some expenses, but is expected to go beyond just the "out-of-pocket" costs the recipient has incurred.
In business in Europe or the US, it usually means to help organise progress amongst a group of people in some way and almost never involves paying them anything.
This is rather about helping them by doing preparation and analysis; by chairing and minute-taking at meetings and by mobilising, coaching and advising.
The English word cousin conflates them with the children of a maternal uncle or those of aunts, who in a patrilineal society belong to a different clan.
The high number of children orphaned by AIDS and poverty combined with the communal culture of Uganda leads to an extremely high number of dependents and a great deal of confusion for an outsider trying to determine biological family structure.
[6] The word vernacular, rarely used in ordinary conversation in most of the English speaking world, is common in Uganda to mean local language.
It comes from the fact that in most primary schools, pupils are punished for speaking "vernacular", languages other than English.
This phrase also applies to living a lavish or abundant lifestyle, hence "You are eating money", which commonly means one is successful and doing well.
A taxi taking one passenger at a time on a negotiable route is referred to as a special hire.
Ugandans are perfectly correct to use the word to express sympathy and sadness for something undesirable that has happened to someone by saying "Oh, sorry" or "I'm sorry".
However, in England direct use like this is now usually an expression of regret with some responsibility attached – a form of apology.
The Broadway play The Vagina Monologues had a brief, but notorious, appearance on the Ugandan stage before being banned by government censors.
The brouhaha led to the entry of the word monologue into Ugandan English as a euphemism for vagina.
The newspaper Red Pepper popularised the use of the word kandahar and after the 2010 World Cup, vuvuzela for vagina, and whopper for penis.
Example: I failed the exam, now those are other zibbs This term originates from the Luganda word for problems ebizibu The adverb Just is often used at the end of the statement to express obviousness.
The noun Gas is in some scenarios used to denote physical strength as opposed to an air like fluid or gasoline.
The noun Mob does not necessarily denote a large unruly crowd of people but can also be used to mean objects.
But it can also be diminutive, such as in the case when a woman is telling her friends how she was bothered by an overly flirtatious young man on the taxi, "Eh!
Ka-timba, however, in the context of building construction refers to a thin piece of steel (such as re-bar), rather than the wood which one might expect.
Thus, as is common in Uganda, one word will have multiple, if not numerous, meanings depending on the context in which it is used, as will the prefixes.
Examples include well fought, to soldiers on the winning side after a war; well bought, to someone with a new car or house; and even well put on, to a well-dressed person.
For example, a barber will say "Sit down and I cut your hair," or a messenger might say "They told me to come and you give me the package."
Other examples include rendering the past participle of "to game" as gam, "to fetch" as fatch and "to chop" as chap.
Since native speakers, English recordings, and dictionaries with pronunciation guides are not readily available to most Ugandans, they rely on spelling to guess how to pronounce words.
For example, the word dining is frequently spelt "dinning," which to a native English speaker would be pronounced with a "short" i /ɪ/, as if it refers to making a loud noise (din) rather than referring to the room in which eating takes place (dine).