Rwanda-Rundi is a group of

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 ...

s, specifically a

dialect continuum A dialect continuum or dialect chain is a series of Variety (linguistics), language varieties spoken across some geographical area such that neighboring varieties are Mutual intelligibility, mutually intelligible, but the differences accumulat ...

, spoken in Central Africa. Two dialects,

Kirundi Kirundi, also known as Rundi, is a Bantu language spoken by some 9 million people in Burundi and adjacent parts of Rwanda, Tanzania, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Uganda, as well as in Kenya. It is the official language of Burundi. Kiru ...

and

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 there ...

, have been standardized as

national languages A national language is a language (or language variant, e.g. dialect) that has some connection—de facto or de jure—with a nation. There is little consistency in the use of this term. One or more languages spoken as first languages in the te ...

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

and

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 ...

respectively. These neighbouring dialects are

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 an ...

, but other dialects which are more distant ones, may not be. The other dialects are spoken in DR Congo (Kinyabwisha in North Kivu, Kinyamulenge in South Kivu), Uganda (Rufumbira spoken by the

Bafumbira The Bafumbira (ethnonym: ''Bafumbira''; singular ''Mufumbira''), are a Bantu ethnic group from Kisoro District in South Western Uganda. They are of three indigenous groups: Bahutu, Batutsi and Batwa. History The Batwa are believed to have bee ...

in Kisoro District), and Tanzania; Ha, with one million speakers, is the most widely spoken.

Comparison of Kinyarwanda and Kirundi

and

are very similar in many aspects, but differ in several ways as well.

Tonal marking

Both languages are

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 empha ...

s. High and low tones (or H and L) are the essential tones and, having a 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 and when a long vowel changes from a high tone to a low tone, it is marked as a falling tone. This is often illustrated in

Meeussen's Rule Meeussen's rule is a special case of tone reduction in Bantu languages. The tonal alternation it describes is the lowering, in some contexts, of the last tone of a pattern of two adjacent High tones (HH), resulting in the pattern HL. The phenomenon ...

. Propositions have also been made that tones can shift by a metrical or rhythmic structure.

Spelling

Word formation

There are many instances in which the two speech varieties of both languages have words that are slightly different. However, these differences do not continually recur. One has to memorize such differences as "-anga" in Kinyarwanda in contrast to "-anka" in Kirundi (meaning to dislike or hate), because the shift from "g" to "k" is extremely rare, with proof being words like "inka" (cow), "inkono" (pot) and many other words where "nk" is common in both dialects. Such minor variations involve different consonants, vowels or vowel lengths, tones or affixes.

References

Sources

* {{Authority control Languages of Burundi Languages of Rwanda Languages of Tanzania Languages of the Democratic Republic of the Congo Articles citing Nationalencyklopedin