Most Madi people are
bilingual. In Uganda, the educated class speaks
English as the second language and some also speak
Swahili. In South Sudan, the educated Madis speak English and/or
Arabic. The South Sudanese Madi also speak
Juba Arabic, spoken in South Sudan and not understood in the North. The form of Juba Arabic spoken by the Madi is influenced by the
Nubi language spoken in Uganda among Muslims who are mainly descendants of Gordons troops. Loanwords in Ugandan Madi are therefore mainly of English and/or Swahili origin and in Sudanese Madi of English and/or Juba Arabic origin. There is an interesting linguistic interaction between the Madi, the
Acholi and the
Kuku. Most Madis speak
Acholi but hardly any Acholi speak Madi. This is possibly because during the
first civil war in the Sudan, most Sudanese Madi were settled among the Acholi in Uganda. Possibly for the same reasons, most Kukus speak fluent Ugandan Madi, but hardly any Madi speak
Kuku. It is still possible even today to find among the Sudanese Madi people who can trace their ancestry to the neighbouring tribes – Bari, Kuku, Pajulu, Acholi, etc. Hardly any of them can now speak their ancestral languages; they speak Madi only and have become fully absorbed into the Madi community. Crazzolara claims that there are linguistic traces of Madi found in
Nilotic languages like
Dinka (especially
Atwot),
Nuer and
Lwo (Acholi,
Alur and
Lango) and among the
Bantu (
Nyoro and
Ganda). There are also some claims which maintain that there are Acholi speaking clans in Pakele in Adjumani (in Adjumani District), whose Madi accent is said to be completely different from that of the other Madi in the area. In Adjumani itself, the Oyuwi (ojuwt) clans are said to speak three languages: Madi,
Kakwa and
Lugbara. == Phonology ==