Uganda, March 24 -- Oral tradition may equate to verbal communication, but the reverse is not verily true. That is because the verbal consists of both the written and spoken while the oral is strictly speech.

Still, that does not limit oral tradition as it is an essential form of human communication and is thus given to the verities, vagaries and varieties of artistic expression. To be sure, oral tradition, or oral lore, is embracive of art. It is also a means by which ideas, cultural diversity and its richness is expressed, preserved, and parlayed into a cross-generational vehicle journeying across the smooth terrain of shared meaning.

By this token, oral tradition conveys jokes, legends, stories, proverbs, language, folktales, ballads...