Luganda

Ganda or Luganda^[4] (/luːˈɡændə/ loo-GAN-də;^[5] Oluganda [oluɡâːndá])^[6] is a Bantu language spoken in the African Great Lakes region. It is one of the major languages in Uganda and is spoken by more than 5.56 million Baganda^[7] and other people principally in central Uganda, including the country's capital, Kampala. Typologically, it is an agglutinative, tonal language with subject–verb–object word order and nominative–accusative morphosyntactic alignment.

With at least 5.6 million first-language speakers in the Buganda region and 5.4 million second language speakers fluent elsewhere^[8] in different regions especially in major urban areas like Mbale, Tororo, Jinja, Gulu, Mbarara, Hoima, Kasese etc. Luganda is Uganda's de facto language of national identity as it is the most widely spoken Ugandan language used mostly in trade in urban areas. The language is also the most-spoken unofficial language in Rwanda's capital Kigali.^[9] As a second language, it follows English and precedes Swahili in Uganda.

Lusoga, the language spoken in Busoga to the east of Buganda, is very closely related to Luganda. The two languages are almost mutually intelligible,^[10] and have an estimated lexical similarity of between 82% and 86%.^[11]