Kirundi, also known as Rundi, is a

Bantu language The Bantu languages (English: , Proto-Bantu: *bantʊ̀) are a large family of languages spoken by the Bantu people of Central, Southern, Eastern africa and Southeast Africa. They form the largest branch of the Southern Bantoid languages. The t ...

spoken by some 9 million people in

Burundi Burundi (, ), officially the Republic of Burundi ( rn, Repuburika y’Uburundi ; Swahili: ''Jamuhuri ya Burundi''; French: ''République du Burundi'' ), is a landlocked country in the Great Rift Valley at the junction between the African Gr ...

and adjacent parts of

Rwanda Rwanda (; rw, u Rwanda ), officially the Republic of Rwanda, is a landlocked country in the Great Rift Valley of Central Africa, where the African Great Lakes region and Southeast Africa converge. Located a few degrees south of the Equator ...

Tanzania Tanzania (; ), officially the United Republic of Tanzania ( sw, Jamhuri ya Muungano wa Tanzania), is a country in East Africa within the African Great Lakes region. It borders Uganda to the north; Kenya to the northeast; Comoro Islands ...

, the

Democratic Republic of the Congo The Democratic Republic of the Congo (french: République démocratique du Congo (RDC), colloquially "La RDC" ), informally Congo-Kinshasa, DR Congo, the DRC, the DROC, or the Congo, and formerly and also colloquially Zaire, is a country in ...

Uganda }), is a landlocked country in East Africa. The country is bordered to the east by Kenya, to the north by South Sudan, to the west by the Democratic Republic of the Congo, to the south-west by Rwanda, and to the south by Tanzania. The ...

, as well as in Kenya. It is the

official language An official language is a language given supreme status in a particular country, state, or other jurisdiction. Typically the term "official language" does not refer to the language used by a people or country, but by its government (e.g. judiciary, ...

of Burundi. Kirundi is

mutually intelligible In linguistics, mutual intelligibility is a relationship between languages or dialects in which speakers of different but related varieties can readily understand each other without prior familiarity or special effort. It is sometimes used as a ...

with

Kinyarwanda Kinyarwanda, Rwandan or Rwanda, officially known as Ikinyarwanda, is a Bantu language and a dialect of the Rwanda-Rundi language that is spoken in Rwanda and adjacent parts of Burundi, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Uganda (where ther ...

, an official language of

, and the two form part of the wider

dialect continuum A dialect continuum or dialect chain is a series of language varieties spoken across some geographical area such that neighboring varieties are mutually intelligible, but the differences accumulate over distance so that widely separated vari ...

known as

Rwanda-Rundi Rwanda-Rundi is a group of Bantu languages, specifically a dialect continuum, spoken in Central Africa. Two dialects, Kirundi and Kinyarwanda, have been standardized as national languages of Burundi and Rwanda respectively. These neighbouring ...

.Ethnologue, 15th ed. Kirundi is natively spoken by the

Hutu The Hutu (), also known as the Abahutu, are a Bantu ethnic or social group which is native to the African Great Lakes region. They mainly live in Rwanda, Burundi and the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, where they form one of the p ...

, including Bakiga and other related ethnicities, as well as

Tutsi The Tutsi (), or Abatutsi (), are an ethnic group of the African Great Lakes region. They are a Bantu-speaking ethnic group and the second largest of three main ethnic groups in Rwanda and Burundi (the other two being the largest Bantu ethnic g ...

, Twa and Hima among others have adopted the language. Neighbouring dialects of Kirundi are

with Ha, a language spoken in western

. Kirundi is one of the languages where Meeussen's rule, a rule describing a certain pattern of tonal change in Bantu languages, is active. In 2020, the Rundi Academy was established to help standardize and promote Kirundi. Bicycles in Burundi

Phonology

Consonants

Although the literature on Rundi agrees on 5 vowels, the number of consonants can vary anywhere from 19 to 26 consonants. The table below is compiled from a survey of academic acceptance of Rundi consonants.

Vowels

The table below gives the vowel sounds of Rundi. All five vowels occur in

long Long may refer to: Measurement * Long, characteristic of something of great duration * Long, characteristic of something of great length * Longitude (abbreviation: long.), a geographic coordinate * Longa (music), note value in early music mensu ...

and short forms. The distinction is

phonemic In phonology and linguistics, a phoneme () is a unit of sound that can distinguish one word from another in a particular language. For example, in most dialects of English, with the notable exception of the West Midlands and the north-west ...

Tone

Rundi is a

tonal language Tone is the use of pitch in language to distinguish lexical or grammatical meaning – that is, to distinguish or to inflect words. All verbal languages use pitch to express emotional and other paralinguistic information and to convey emph ...

. There are two essential tones in Rundi: high and low (or H and L). Since Rundi has phonemic distinction on vowel length, when a long vowel changes from a low tone to a high tone it is marked as a rising tone. When a long vowel changes from a high tone to a low tone, it is marked as a falling tone. Rundi is often used in phonology to illustrate examples of Meeussen's rule In addition, it has been proposed that tones can shift by a metrical or rhythmic structure. Some authors have expanded these more complex features of the tonal system noting that such properties are highly unusual for a tone system.

Phonotactics

Syllable structure in Rundi is considered to be CV, that is having no clusters, no coda consonants, and no complex vowel nuclei. It has been proposed that sequences that are CVV in the surface realization are actually CV in the underlying deep structure, with the consonant coalescing with the first vowel.

Consonant harmony

Rundi has been shown to have properties of

consonant harmony Consonant harmony is a type of "long-distance" phonological assimilation, akin to the similar assimilatory process involving vowels, i.e. vowel harmony. Examples In Athabaskan languages One of the more common harmony processes is ''coronal harm ...

particularly when it comes to sibilants. Meeussen described this harmony in his essay and it is investigated further by others.Ntihirageza 1993 One example of this harmony is triggered by and and targets the set of and in preceding adjacent stem syllables.

Official use

Kirundi was recognized an

in Burundi by the 1962

Constitution of the Kingdom of Burundi ; rn, Ishimikiro ry'Ingoma y'i Burundi) , jurisdiction = Kingdom of Burundi , image = Coat of arms of the Kingdom of Burundi.svg , image_size = 75 , caption = Coat of arms of the Kingdom of Burundi ...

. In accordance with the constitution, many Burundian government orders, especially those printed in the ''Bulletin Officiel du Burundi'' from 1962 to 1963, were written in both French and Kirundi. After the constitution was suspended in 1966, Kirundi remained a ''de facto'' official language in the county, though its use in government documents declined. In 1972 Kirundi was adopted as the official language of instruction in Burundian primary schools.

Notes

References

* Broselow, E. & Niyondagara, A. (1990
"Feature geometry of Kirundi palatalization"
''Studies in the Linguistic Sciences'' 20: 71-88. * de Samie. (2009) ''Dictionnaire Francais-Kirundi''. L'Harmattan. Paris. * Goldsmith, J. & Sabimana, F. (1989) ''The Kirundi Verb''. Modèles en tonologie. Editions du CNRS. Paris. * Meeussen, A.E. (1959) ''Essai de grammaire Rundi''. Annales du Musée Royal du Congo Belge, Série Sciences Humaines – Linguistique, vol. 24. Tervuren. * Myers, S. (1987) ''Tone and the structure of words in Shona''. PhD dissertation, University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Garland Press. New York. * Ntihirageza, J. (1993) ''Kirundi Palatization and Sibilant Harmony : Implications for Feature Geometry''. Master thesis, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, Illinois. * Philippson, G. (2003) ''Tone reduction vs. metrical attraction in the evolution of Eastern Bantu tone systems''. INALCO. Paris. * Sagey, E. (1986)
''The Representation of Features and Relations in Non-Linear Phonology''
Doctoral dissertation, MIT, Cambridge, Mass. * * * Zorc, R. D. & Nibagwire, L. (2007) ''Kinyarwanda and Kirundi Comparative Grammar''. Dunwoody Press. Hyattsville.

External links

Online Kirundi/English dictionary, revised

Free English-Kirundi Dictionary

Free Kirundi selfstudy course

Free Kirundi grammar study book

PanAfrican L10n page on Kirundi...

Learning Kirundi
(in Spanish)
Online Kirundi/English dictionary

USA Foreign Service Institute Kirundi basic course
{{Authority control Languages of Burundi Languages of the Democratic Republic of the Congo Languages of Tanzania Languages of Uganda Rwanda-Rundi languages