Introduction
The Bagwere people speak the Lugwere language. The Bagwere reside primarily in Budaka, Kibuku, and Pallisa districts in Eastern Uganda where the number of mother-tongue speakers is approximately 620,000 people.
Until now there has been no Lugwere dictionary available which could be used in schools, to encourage local writers to be more actively involved in committing their cultural stories, beliefs, and local history to paper, and to encourage the development of literature in Lugwere.
This dictionary has been compiled from various sources, with most of the words being collected during a community-based word collection workshop that was held in 2001. Many other words have been added and updated by those working under the auspices of SIL International since that time.
We are very much aware of the limitations of this first edition and welcome feedback and corrections. It is our intention to continue working on this dictionary—especially to make corrections where needed. In addition it is planned to make the dictionary available in electronic format on a website. This website will contain the complete dictionary, with alphabetic and semantic meaning based search facilities.
Our hope and prayer is that this dictionary will be an important step toward long-term Lugwere language and culture preservation which should go hand in hand with development in the region.
Richard Nzogi and Martin Diprose
September 2012
PO Box 750
Entebbe
UGANDA
