Kirundi

Rundi
Ikirundi
The Kirundi text below welcomes visitors to the Bururi natural forrest reserve.
Native to	Burundi
Ethnicity	Hutu Tutsi Twa Ganwa
Native speakers	13 million (2021)
Language family	Niger–Congo? Atlantic–Congo Volta-Congo Benue–Congo Bantoid Southern Bantoid Bantu Northeast Bantu Great Lakes Bantu Western Lakes Bantu Rwanda-Rundi Rundic Rundi
Dialects	Ikibo Ikirundi Ikiragane Igisoni Ikinyabweru Ikiyogoma Ikimoso
Writing system	Latin
Official status
Official language in	Burundi
Language codes
ISO 639-1	rn Rundi
ISO 639-2	run Rundi
ISO 639-3	run Rundi
Glottolog	rund1242  Rundi rund1241  Rundi-Kitwa
Guthrie code	JD.62

Person	Umurundi
People	Abarundi
Language	Ikirundi
Country	u Burundi

Kirundi (/kɪˈrʊndi, -ˈrʌn-/), officially known as Ikirundi (also known as Rundi), is a Bantu language and the national language of Burundi. It is mutually intelligible with Kinyarwanda, the national language of Rwanda, and the two form parts of the Rwanda-Rundi dialect continuum spoken in Burundi, Rwanda, Tanzania, Democratic Republic of Congo, Uganda, and Kenya.

Kirundi is natively spoken by the Hutu (including the Bakiga), Tutsi, Twa, and the Hima people; other related ethnicities have also adopted Kirundi as their mother tongue. Neighbouring dialects of Kirundi are mutually intelligible with Ha, a language spoken in western Tanzania.

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.

Phonology

See also: Rwanda-Rundi § Comparison of Kinyarwanda and Kirundi

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.

		Labial	Alveolar	Post- alveolar	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Nasal		m	n		ɲ	ŋ
Plosive	voiceless	p	t			k
	voiced	b	d		ɟ	ɡ
Affricate		p͡f	t͡s	t͡ʃ
Fricative	voiceless	f	s	ʃ			h
	voiced	v	z	ʒ
Approximant					j	w
Flap			ɾ
Trill			r

Vowels

The table below gives the vowel sounds of Rundi.

	Front	Back
Close	i	u
Mid	e	o
Open	a

All five vowels occur in long and short forms. The distinction is phonemic.

Tone

Rundi is a tonal language. 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 particularly when it comes to sibilants. Meeussen described this harmony in his essay and it is investigated further by others. One example of this harmony is triggered by /ʃ/ and /ʒ/ and targets the set of /s/ and /z/ in preceding adjacent stem syllables.

Orthography

Letter(s)	a	b	c	d	e	f	g	h	i	j	k	m	n	ny	o	p	pf	r	s	sh	t	ts	u	v	w	y	z	zh
IPA	a, aː	β, b	t͡ʃ	d	e, eː	f	ɡ, ɟ	h, ɦ	i, iː	ɟ	k, c	m	n, ŋ	ɲ	o, oː	p	p͡f	ɾ	s	ʃ	t	t͡s	u, uː	v	w	j	z	ʒ

Grammar

Nouns

Kirundi, similarly to Kinyarwanda, uses 16 of the Bantu noun classes. 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.

Prefix	Classification			Number	Typical words	Example
	Bantu	Cox	???
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

Official use

The Lord's Prayer in Kirundi (Church of the Pater Noster)

Kirundi was recognized an official language in Burundi by the 1962 Constitution 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 country, though its use in government documents declined. In 1972, Kirundi was adopted as the official language of instruction in Burundian primary schools.

References

• Broselow, Ellen; Niyondagara, Alice (Spring 1990). "Feature geometry of Kirundi palatalization". Studies in the Linguistic Sciences. 20 (1): 71–88. ISSN 0049-2388.
• de Samie, Thierry (2009). Dictionnaire français-kirundi (2nd ed.). Paris: L'Harmattan. ISBN 978-2-296-09185-6.
• Goldsmith, John; Sabimana, Firmard (1989). "The Kirundi Verb" (PDF). Modèles en tonologie: kirundi et kinyarwanda. Paris: Editions du CNRS. ISBN 9782222043232. Archived (PDF) from the original on 2022-11-24.
• Meeussen, A. E. (1959). Essai de grammaire Rundi. Annales du Musée Royal du Congo Belge, Série Sciences Humaines – Linguistique. Vol. 24. Tervuren.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
• Myers, Scott P. (1987). Tone and the structure of words in Shona (PhD dissertation). Amherst: University of Massachusetts. ProQuest 303602751.
• Ntihirageza, J. (1993). Kirundi Palatization and Sibilant Harmony: Implications for Feature Geometry (Master thesis). Carbondale: Southern Illinois University.
• Philippson, Gérard (1998). "Tone reduction vs. metrical attraction in the evolution of Eastern Bantu tone systems". In Hyman, Larry M.; Kisseberth, Charles W. (eds.). Theoretical Aspects of Bantu Tone. Cambridge University Press. pp. 315–329. ISBN 1575860953.
• Sagey, Elizabeth Caroline (1986). The Representation of Features and Relations in Non-Linear Phonology (PDF) (PhD dissertation). Cambridge: MIT. Archived (PDF) from the original on 2005-03-22.
• Verdoodt, A. (2011). "Social and Linguistic Structures of Burundi, a Typical 'Unimodal' Country". Language and Society: Anthropological Issues (reprint ed.). Walter de Gruyter. pp. 509–532. ISBN 9783110806489.
• Weinstein, Warren (1976). Historical Dictionary of Burundi. Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press. ISBN 9780810809628.
• Zorc, R. David; Nibagwire, Louise (2007). Kinyarwanda and Kirundi Comparative Grammar (PDF). Hyattsville, MD: Dunwoody Press. Archived (PDF) from the original on 2022-07-14. Retrieved 2024-01-16.

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 Archived 2008-08-01 at the Wayback Machine
• USA Foreign Service Institute Kirundi basic course