Taathira za Kinyankore kama lugha ya kwanza kwa mtu anayejifunza Kiswahili.

Abstract

In English the title of this research is THE EFFECT OF RUNYANKORE AS A FIRST LANGUAGE ON SOMEONE LEARNING KISWAHILI. The aim of the study was to find out whether Kiswahili and Runyankore have any similar linguistic components and how the similarity or difference affects the learning process in which the learner’s first language is Runyankore. It was assumed that since the two languages are members of the same linguistic family of Bantu languages, they have several similar linguistic features which enable speakers of Runyankore to learn Kiswahili with a considerable amount of ease. On the other hand, it was also believed that since Kiswahili was directly and heavily affected by Arabic it has many features that a Runyankore speaker would find hard to learn. Using data collected from books and respondents, the two languages were compared and contrasted at phonological, morphological, lexical, syntactic and orthographic levels. The enrolment and performance of candidates offering to do Kiswahili examinations at the ordinary and advanced levels of education in Uganda were considered. The discovery was that both Kiswahili and Runyankore have some similar linguistic features which enable speakers of Runyankore to learn Kiswahili with considerable ease. The effects of Arabic on Kiswahili were found to have very little effect because words borrowed from Arabic were assimilated into the Bantu morpho-phonological system and very few still have characteristics of Arabic, especially in terms of sounds and syllable structure. It was therefore concluded that the effect of Runyankore as a first language on a person learning Kiswahili is a positive one because it makes the learning process easy to a considerable extent.