Kinyarwandaan

Kinyarwandaan, commonly referred to as Kinyarwanda, is a Bantu language spoken primarily in Rwanda and by communities in neighboring countries. The term Kinyarwandaan is sometimes used to denote the language and its speakers in an ethnolinguistic sense.

Kinyarwanda is part of the Niger-Congo language family, in the Bantu branch, within the Great Lakes group that also includes Kirundi. It is closely related to Kirundi, and the two languages are largely mutually intelligible.

In Rwanda, Kinyarwanda is the most widely spoken language and serves as a primary medium of communication in everyday life. It is also spoken in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Uganda, and Tanzania, particularly in areas near Rwanda’s borders. Estimates of total speakers place the number in the low tens of millions, commonly cited as around 12 to 15 million people worldwide.

Written Kinyarwanda uses the Latin alphabet with diacritics, and its orthography is designed to be fairly phonemic. The language employs a noun class system and concord, features characteristic of Bantu languages, with morphology that marks tense, aspect, negation, and other grammatical relations through affixation and word-form changes.

Kinyarwanda has a significant presence in education, media, and government in Rwanda, alongside other languages such as French, English, and Swahili. It has standardized spelling conventions and a range of educational materials, dictionaries, and media outlets that promote literacy and linguistic continuity within Rwanda and the wider region.