Lwuor 

Acholi Language

Phonological

Phonology is the study of the system of sounds in a particular language, or languages in general. The phonology of a language encompasses the rules about the structure and sequence of sounds.
Here's a brief phonological overview of Acholi:


Consonants: Acholi includes stops (like p, t, k), nasals (like m, n, ŋ), fricatives (like s, ʃ represented by "x" in Acholi), and approximants (like w, j represented by "y" in Acholi). It also includes voiced and voiceless versions of certain consonants, similar to English.

Vowels: Acholi has five vowel qualities, which can be short or long: a, e, i, o, u. This is how they are pronounce: 
A pronounced like in words App, apply, Agro, Afro, application, agony etc not like apple, ago, 
E Pronounced like in egg, education, ego etc.
I Pronounced like in it, in, not like nice, despite, like etc.
O Pronounced like in oak, odd etc not like in out.
U Pronounced like in Uganda, ute, full etc not like in luck, duck etc.

Tone: Acholi, like many African languages, is a tonal language. That means pitch (high or low tone) can change the meaning of a word e.g. tong(spear, cut, egg, chookie(male chicken) and mate), lega(leader, prayer, asking) etc.

Syllable structure: The syllable structure in Acholi is usually (C)V, where C stands for Consonant, and V stands for Vowel. This means that syllables in Acholi often consist of a vowel alone, or a consonant followed by a vowel e.g. oo(fire place), kereng(transparent), ok(arrived)

Word Stress: Stress in Acholi typically falls on the penultimate (second-to-last) syllable of a word e.g pol-lo(heaven), aguragura(horse), cwinyo(light fire), gicika(room).

Phonotactics: Phonotactics refers to the rules governing the possible phoneme sequences in a language. In Acholi, for example, words generally cannot begin with certain consonants like r or l, but these sounds can appear in other parts of words e.g.

Use of R instead of T
In some Acholi, r is used instead of t like in butu will be buru(sleep)bato will be baro(yam)cito will be ciro(going)kite will be kire(behaviour) etc. This is common in clans like pajok in South Sudan and others in Uganda. 

Use of U instead of O
Some Acholi use U instead of O e.g. 

Acholi(U)OEnglish
kuruKurowait
LutuwaLotuwaour people
tukutukoplaying
tudutudoconnecting

Remember, phonological rules can be quite complex and vary between different dialects of the same language. This is a basic introduction to Acholi phonology, and a more detailed understanding would require in-depth linguistic study