Edgar speaking Lugwere
This video was recorded by Daniel Bogre Udell in Namibia and features Gwere speaker Edgar. Gwere was spoken by around 409,000 people as of a 2002 census, and was observed to be increasing at that time. Also known as Lugwere, Gwere belongs to the Bantoid group of the Niger-Congo language family and exists as one of the Bantu languages of Uganda. Although Gwere is spoken primarily by residents of eastern Uganda in the Budaka District, Pallisa District, and Kibuku District, and resembles the neighboring dialects of Soga and Ganda, it also contains lexical similarities with other western Ugandan tribes. The Ruli people, for instance, living far removed from the Gwere in central Uganda, nevertheless share large portions of their vocabulary with altered phonetic inventories. The Bagwere people are thought to have emigrated to their current districts from Bunyoro and Toro by travelling across the Mpologoma River and moving along the shores of Lake Kyoga. This path matches those other tribes that settled along Lake Kyoga such as the Baluli, Bakenye, and Balamogi, giving rise to immense linguistic overlapping between these groups.