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Kinyarwanda,Pronounced , , , ; Rwandan or Rwanda, officially known as Ikinyarwanda, Official Gazette n° Special of 24/12/2015
is a Bantu language and the national language of Rwanda."Rwanda", Ethnologue, 27th Ed. It is a dialect of the Rwanda-Rundi language that is also spoken in adjacent parts of the Democratic Republic of the Congo and in Uganda, where the dialect is known as Ikinyakore, Rufumbira, or Urufumbira. Kinyarwanda is universal among the native population of Rwanda and is mutually intelligible with Kirundi, the national language of neighbouring Burundi."Rundi", Ethnologue, 27th Ed. Kinyabwishya and Kinyamulenge are mutually intelligible dialects spoken in the North Kivu and South Kivu provinces of neighbouring DR Congo.
In 2010, the Rwanda Academy of Language and Culture (RALC) Official Gazette n° Special of 27/07/2012
Except in a few morphological contexts, the sequences 'ki' and 'ke' may be pronounced interchangeably as and or and according to speaker's preference.
The letters at the end of a word followed by a word starting with a vowel often follows a pattern of omission in common speech (sandhi), though the orthography remains the same. Consider the following excerpt of the Rwanda Nziza: Reka tukurate tukuvuge ibigwi wowe utubumbiye hamwe twese Abanyarwanda uko watubyaye berwa, sugira, singizwa iteka. would be pronounced as Reka tukurate tukuvug' ibigwi wow' utubumiye hamwe twes' abanyarwand' uko watubyaye berwa, sugira singizw' iteka.
There are some discrepancies in pronunciation from orthographic Cw and Cy. The glides strengthen to stops in consonant clusters. For example, rw (as in Rwanda) is normally pronounced . The differences are the following:
These are all sequences; , for example, is not labial-velar . Even when Rwanda is pronounced rather than , the onset is a sequence, not a labialization .
The class I prefixes y-/a- and ba- correspond to the third person for persons. The personal prefix n- becomes m- before a labial sound (p, b, f, v), while personal prefix tu- becomes du- under Dahl's Law.
Every regular verb has three stems: the imperfective (ending in the morpheme -a), the perfective (ending in the morpheme -:ye, which may trigger a variety of morphophonological changes in the preceding segment) and the subjunctive (ending in the morpheme -e).
According to Botne (1983), a verb may belong to any of eight Aktionsart categories, which may be broadly grouped into stative and dynamic categories. In the immediate tense, dynamic verbs take the imperfective stem while stative verbs take the perfective stem, while both use the imperfective stem in the habitual or gnomic tense.
Simple tense/mood markers include the following:
Object affixes corresponding to the noun classes of an object may be placed after the tense marker and before the verb stem:
The personal object affixes are as follows:
The periphrastic causatives use the verbs -teer- and -tum-, which mean cause. With -teer-, the original subject becomes the object of the main clause, leaving the original verb in the infinitive (just like in English):
In this construction, the original S can be deleted.
With -túm-, the original S remains in the embedded clause and the original verb is still marked for person and tense:
Derivational causatives use the instrumental marker -iish-. The construction is the same, but it is instrumental when the subject is inanimate and it is causative when the subject is animate:
This morpheme can be applied to intransitives (3) or transitives (4):
However, there can only be one animate direct object. If a sentence has two, one or both is deleted and understood from context.
The suffix -iish- implies an indirect causation (similar to English have in "I had him write a paper), while other causatives imply a direct causation (similar to English make in "I made him write a paper").
One of these more direct causation devices is the deletion of what is called a "neutral" morpheme -ik-, which indicates state or potentiality. Stems with the -ik- removed can take -iish, but the causation is less direct:
Another direct causation maker is -y- which is used for some verbs:
/ref> was established to help promote and sustain Kinyarwanda. The organization attempted an orthographic reform in 2014, but it was met with pushback due to their perceived top-down and political nature, among other reasons.
Geographic distribution
Kinyarwanda is spoken in Rwanda, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Uganda.
Phonology
Consonants
The table below gives the consonants of Kinyarwanda.
Vowels
The table below gives the vowel sounds of Kinyarwanda.
Tone
Kinyarwanda is a tonal language. Like many Bantu languages, it has a two-way contrast between high and low tones (low-tone syllables may be analyzed as toneless). The realization of tones in Kinyarwanda is influenced by a complex set of phonological rules.
Orthography
>
! Orthography !! Pronunciation or
Grammar
Nouns
Kinyarwanda uses 16 of the Bantu languages . Sometimes these are grouped into 10 pairs so that most singular and plural forms of the same word are included in the same class. The table below shows the 16 noun classes and how they are paired in two commonly used systems.
umu- 1 1 singular humans umuntu – person aba- 2 plural abantu – people umu- 3 2 singular trees, shrubs and things that extend umusozi – hill imi- 4 plural imisozi – hills iri- 5 5 3 singular things in quantities, liquids iryinyo – tooth ama- 6 5/8/9 3/8/9 plural (also substances) amenyo – teeth iki- 7 4 singular generic, large, or abnormal things ikintu – thing ibi- 8 plural ibintu – things in- 9 3 5 singular some plants, animals and household implements inka – cow in- 10 3/6 5/6 plural inka – cows uru- 11 6 singular mixture, body parts urugo – home aka- 12 7 singular diminutive forms of other nouns akantu – little thing utu- 13 plural utuntu – little things ubu- 14 8 n/a abstract nouns, qualities or states ubuntu – generosity uku- 15 9 n/a actions, verbal nouns and gerunds ukuntu – means aha- 16 10 n/a places, locations ahantu – place
Verbs
All Kinyarwanda verb begin with ku- (morphed into k(w)- before vowels, and into gu- before stems beginning with a voiceless consonant due to Dahl's Law). To conjugate, the infinitive prefix is removed and replaced with a prefix agreeing with the subject. Then a tense marker can be inserted.
tw- mw- b- y- y- by- z- z- tw- bw- y- h- tu-/du- mu-/mw- ba-
-tw- -b- -b- -y- -y- -by- -z- -z- -tw- -y- -y- -h- tu-/du- (cons.)
-tw- (vowel)-ba- (cons.)
-b- (vowel)-ba- (cons.)
-b- (vowel)
Causatives
Kinyarwanda employs the use of periphrastic , in addition to morphological causatives.
> | -mének- || "be broken" || -mén- || "break" || - méneesh- | "have (something) broken"
"have (something) cut"
Notes
Further reading
(2025). 9783896455888, Rüdiger Köppe Verlag. ISBN 9783896455888
External links
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