Kinyarwanda is one of the four official languages of Rwanda and is spoken by almost all of the native population. That contrasts with most modern African states, whose borders were drawn by colonial powers and do not correspond to ethnic boundaries or precolonial kingdoms.
Phonology
Consonants
The table below gives the consonants of Kinyarwanda.
/p/ is only found in loanwords.
Consonants in parentheses are allophones.
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. The realization of tones in Kinyarwanda is influenced by a complex set of phonological rules.
Orthography
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 'a', 'e', or 'i' at the end of a word followed by a word starting with a vowel often follows a pattern of omission in common speech, though the orthography remains the same. For example, 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 is pronounced. The differences are the following: Note that these are all sequences;, for example, is not labial-velar. Even when Rwanda'' is pronounced, the onset is a sequence, not a labialized.
Grammar
Nouns
Kinyarwanda uses 16 of the Bantunoun 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.
Verbs
All Kinyarwanda verb infinitives begin with ku-. To conjugate, the infinitive prefix is removed and replaced with a prefix agreeing with the subject. Then a tense marker can be inserted. 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, while personal prefix tu- becomes du- under Dahl's Law. Every regular verb has three stems: the imperfective, the perfective and the subjunctive. According to Botne, a verb may belong to any of eight Aktionsart categories, which may be broadly grouped into stative and dynamic categories. In the immediatetense, 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:
* Habitual Past : -a- plus -ga suffixed to the verb
* Future : -za-
With the past stem:
* Polite Imperative : -
* Perfect : -a-
* Near Past : -ra-
* Preterite : -ara-
* Subjunctive : -za-
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:
Causatives
Kinyarwanda employs the use of periphrastic causatives, in addition to morphological causatives. 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 : 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 or transitives : 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, while other causatives imply a direct causation. 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:
