Kinyarwanda

Ikinyarwanda

Kinyarwanda, also known as Rwanda (Ruanda) or Rwandan, is a dialect of the Rwanda-Rundi language spoken by some 12 million people in Rwanda, where it is the official language, and adjacent parts of southern Uganda. (The Kirundi dialect is the official language of neighboringBurundi.)[3]

The inhabitants of Rwanda and Burundi belong to three different ethnic groups: Hutu (84%), Tutsi (15%), and Twa (1%) (a pygmy people). The fact that these ethnic groups share the same language is assumed to be the result of the Hutu outnumbering the latter two groups (see Hutufor a more complete historical perspective). Rwanda is one of the few Sub-Saharan African countries where the native language (Kinyarwanda) is spoken by all ethnic groups of the country.

Except in a few morphological contexts, the sequences 'ki' and 'ke' may be pronounced interchangeably as [ki] and [ke] or [ci] and [ce] according to speaker's preference.[citation needed]

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 (observed in the following excerpt of the Rwandan anthem) 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."

In the colloquial language, there are some discrepancies from orthographic Cw and Cy. Specifically, rw (as in Rwanda) is often pronounced /ɾɡw/.

Nouns
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.

Verbs
All Kinyarwanda verb infinitives begin with gu- or ku- (morphed into kw- before vowels). To conjugate, the infinitive prefix is removed and replaced with a prefix agreeing with the subject. Then a tense infix can be inserted.

Lingala

Lingali

Lingala is a Bantu language spoken throughout the northwestern part of the Democratic Republic of the Congo and a large part of the Republic of the Congo, as well as to some degree in Angola and the Central African Republic. It has over 10 million speakers.

History
In the 19th century, before the creation of the Congo Free State, the Bangala, (literally: 'river people'), were a group of similar Bantu peoples living and trading along the bend of the Congo River that reached from Irebu at the mouth of the Ubangi River to theMongala River. They spoke similar languages, such as Losengo, but their trade language was Bangi, which was the most prestigious language between Stanley Pool (Kinshasa) and Irebu. As a result, people upstream of the Bangala mistook Bangi for the language of the Bangala and called it Lingala (language of the Bangala), and European missionaries followed suit.

In the last two decades of the 19th century, after the forces of Leopold II of Belgium conquered the region and started exploiting it commercially, Bangi came into wider use. The colonial administration, in need of a common language for the region, started to use the language for administrative purposes. It had already simplified, compared to local Bantu languages, in its sentence structure,word structure and sounds, and speakers borrowed words and constructs liberally from other languages. However, the fact that speakers had very similar native languages prevented Lingala from becoming as radically restructured as Kituba, which developed among speakers of both Bantu and West African languages.

Around 1900, CICM missionaries started a project to "purify" the language in order to make it "pure Bantu" again. Meeuwis (1998:7) writes:

Missionaries, such as the Protestant W. Stapleton and later, and more influentially, E. De Boeck himself, judged that the grammar and lexicon of this language were too poor for it to function properly as a medium of education, evangelization, and other types of vertical communication with the Africans in the northwestern and central-western parts of the colony (..). They set out to 'correct' and 'expand' the language by drawing on lexical and grammatical elements from surrounding vernacular languages.

The importance of Lingala as a vernacular has since grown with the size and importance of its main center of use, Kinshasa; with its use as the lingua franca of the armed forces, and with the popularity of soukous music.

Name
European missionaries called the language Bangala, after the Bangala people, or Lingala. The latter was intended to mean '(language) of the Bangala' or 'of the River' (that is, 'Riverine Language'. However, this was an error, as the proper Bangi form would have been Kingala.[3] The name Lingala first appears in writing in a publication by the C.I.C.M. missionary Egide De Boeck (1903).

Characteristics and usage
Lingala has many borrowings from French, even in its basic vocabulary. The language also contains some Portuguese influence, such as its words for butter (mántéka), table (mésa),shoes (sapátu), and some English and Dutch influences; for instance, the word for milk (míliki), book (búku),[4] or motor-car (mótuka).[5] In practice, the extent of borrowing varies widely with speakers, and with the occasion.

Variations
The Lingala language can be divided in several dialects or variations. The major variations are considered to be Standard Lingala, Spoken Lingala, Kinshasa Lingala and Brazzaville Lingala.

Standard Lingala (called lingala littéraire or lingala classique in French) is mostly used in educational and news broadcastings on radio or television, in religious services in the Roman Catholic Church and is the language taught as a subject at all educational levels. Standard Lingala is historically associated with the work of the Catholic Church and missionaries. It has a seven-vowel system /a/ /e/ /ɛ/ /i/ /o/ /ɔ/ /u/ with an obligatory tense-lax vowel harmony. It also has a full range of morphological noun prefixes with mandatory grammatical agreement system with subject–verb, or noun–modifier for each of class. Standard Lingala is largely used in formal functions.

Spoken Lingala (called lingala parlé in French) is the variation mostly used in the day-to-day lives of Lingalaphones. It has a full morphological noun prefix system, but the agreement system is more lax than the standard variation, i.e. noun-modifier agreement is reduced to two classes. Regarding phonology, there is also a seven-vowel system but the vowel harmony is not mandatory. This variation of Lingala is historically associated with the Protestant missionaries' work. Spoken Lingala is largely used in informal functions, and the majority of Lingala songs use spoken Lingala over other variations. Modern spoken Lingala is increasingly influenced by French; French verbs, for example, may be "lingalized" adding Lingala inflection prefixes and suffixes: "acomprenaki te" or "acomprendraki te" (he did not understand, using the French word comprendre) instead of classic Lingala "asímbaki ntína te" [literally: s/he grasped/held the root/cause not].

Vowel harmony
Lingala words show vowel harmony to some extent. The close-mid vowels /e/ and /o/ normally do not mix with the open-mid vowels /ɛ/ and /ɔ/ in words. For example, the words ndɔbɔ'fishhook' and ndobo 'mouse trap' are found, but not *ndɔbo or *ndobɔ.
[edit]Vowel shift

The Lingala spoken in Kinshasa shows a vowel shift from /ɔ/ to /o/, leading to the absence of the phoneme /ɔ/ in favor of /o/. The same occurs with /ɛ/ and /e/, leading to just /e/. So in Kinshasa, a native speaker will say mbóte as /ᵐbóte/, compared to the more traditional pronunciation of /ᵐbɔ́tɛ/.

Prenasalized consonants
The prenasalized stops formed with a nasal followed by a voiceless plosive are allophonic to the voiceless plosives alone in some variations of Lingala.
/ᵐp/: [ᵐp] or [p]e.g.: mpɛmbɛ́ni is pronounced [ᵐpɛᵐbɛ́ni] but in some variations [pɛᵐbɛ́ni]
/ⁿt/: [ⁿt] or [t]e.g.: ntɔ́ngó is pronounced ⁿtɔ́ᵑɡó but in some variations [tɔ́ᵑɡó]
/ᵑk/: [ᵑk] or [k]e.g.: nkanya (fork) is pronounced [ᵑkaɲa] but in some variations [kaɲa]
/ⁿs/: [ⁿs] or [s] (inside a word)e.g.: nyɔnsɔ is pronounced [ɲɔ́ⁿsɔ] but in some variations [ɲɔ́sɔ]

The prenasalized voiced occlusives, /ᵐb/, /ⁿd/, /ᵑɡ/, /ⁿz/ do not vary.

Tones
Lingala being a tonal language, tone is a distinguishing feature in minimal pairs, e.g.: moto (human being) and motó (head), or kokoma (to write) and kokóma (to arrive). There are two tones possible, the normal one is low and the second one is high. There is a third, less common tone – starting high, dipping low and then ending high – all within the same vowel sound, e.g.:bôngó (therefore).
[edit]Tonal morphology

Tense morphemes carry tones.
koma (komL-a : write) inflected gives
simple present L-aL :nakoma naL-komL-aL (I write)
subjunctive H-aL :nákoma naH-komL-aL (I would write)
present:nakomí naL-komL-iH (I have been writing)
sepela (seLpel-a : enjoy) inflected gives
simple present L-aL :osepela oL-seLpelL-aL (you-SG enjoy)
subjunctive H-aL :ósepéla oH-seLpelH-aH (you-SG would enjoy)
present L-iH:osepelí oL-seLpelL-iH (you-SG have been enjoying)

Grammar
Like all Bantu languages, Lingala has a noun class system in which nouns are classified according to the prefixes they bear and according to the prefixes they trigger in sentences. The table below shows the noun classes of Lingala, ordered according to the numbering system that is widely used in descriptions of Bantu languages.
classnoun prefixexampletranslation
1 mo- mopési servant
2 ba- bapési servants
3 mo- mokíla tail
4 mi- mikíla tails
5 li- liloba word
6 ma- maloba words
7 e- elokó jar, stone bottle
8 bi- bilokó jars, stone bottles
9 m-/n- ntaba goat
10 m-/n- ntaba goat (pl.)
9a Ø sánzá moon
10a Ø sánzá moon (pl.)
11 lo- lolemo tongue
14 bo- bosoto dirt

Individual classes pair up with each other to form singular/plural pairs, sometimes called 'genders'. There are seven genders in total. The singular classes 1, 3, 5, 7, and 9 take their plural forms from classes 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, respectively. Additionally, many household items found in class 9 take a class 2 prefix (ba) in the plural: lutu > balutu 'spoon', mesa > bamesa 'table',sani > basani 'plate'. Words in class 11 usually take a class 10 plural. Most words from class 14 (abstract nouns) do not have a plural counterpart.

Class 9 and 10 have a nasal prefix, which assimilates to the following consonant. Thus, the prefix shows up as 'n' on words that start with t or d, e.g. ntaba 'goat', but as 'm' on words that start with b or p (e.g. mbisi 'fish'). There is also a prefixless class 9a and 10a, exemplified by sánzá > sánzá 'moon(s) or month(s)'. Possible ambiguities are solved by the context.

Noun class prefixes do not show up only on the noun itself, but serve as markers throughout the whole sentence. In the sentences below, the class prefixes are underlined. (There is a special verbal form 'a' of the prefix for class 1 nouns.)
molakisi molai yango abiki (CL1.teacher CL1.tall that CL1:recovered) That tall teacher recovered
bato bakúmisa Nkómbó ya Yɔ́ (CL2.people CL2.praise name of You) (Let) people praise Your name (a sentence from the Lord's Prayer)

Only to a certain extent, noun class allocation is semantically governed. Classes 1/2, as in all Bantu languages, mainly contain words for human beings; similarly, classes 9/10 contain many words for animals. In other classes, semantical regularities are mostly absent or are obscured by many exceptions.

Verb inflections and morphology
Verbal extensions
There are 4 morphemes modifying verbs. They are added to some verb root in the following order :
Reversive (-ol-)e.g.: kozinga to wrap and kozingola to develop
Causative (-is-)e.g. : koyéba to know and koyébisa to inform
Applicative (-el-)e.g. : kobíka to heal (self), to save (self) and kobíkela to heal (someone else), to save (someone)
Passive (-am-)e.g. : koboma to kill and kobomama to be killed
Reciprocal or stationary (-an-, sometimes -en-)e.g. : kokúta to find and kokútana to meet
[edit]Tense inflections

The first tone segment affects the subject part of the verb, the second tone segment attaches to the semantic morpheme attached to the root of the verb.
present perfect (LH-í)
simple present (LL-a)
recurrent present (LL-aka)
undefined recent past (LH-ákí)
undefined distant past (LH-áká)
future (L-ko-L-a)
subjunctive (HL-a)

Writing system
Lingala is more a spoken language than a written language, and has several different writing systems. Most of those are ad hoc. Due to the low literacy of Lingala speakers in Lingala (in the Republic of the Congo literacy rate in Lingala as a first language is between 10% and 30%),[citation needed] its popular orthography is very flexible and varies from one Congo to the other. Some orthographies are heavily influenced by the French language orthography; including double S, ss, to transcribe [s] (in the Republic of the Congo); ou for [u] (in the Republic of the Congo); i with umlaut, aï, to transcribe [áí] or [aí]; e with acute accent, é, to transcribe [e]; e to transcribe [ɛ], o with acute accent, ó, to transcribe [ɔ] or sometimes [o] in opposition to o transcribing [o] or [ɔ]; i or y can both transcribe [j]. The allophones are also found as alternating forms in the popular orthography; sango is an alternative to nsango (information or news);nyonso, nyoso, nionso, nioso (every) are all transcriptions of nyɔ́nsɔ.

In 1976, the Société Zaïroise des Linguistes (Zairian Linguists Society) adopted a writing system for Lingala, using the open e (ɛ) and the open o (ɔ) to write the vowels [ɛ] and [ɔ], and sporadic usage of accents to mark tone. Also, the limitations of input methods prevents Lingala writers from easily using the ɛ and ɔ and the accents. For example, it is almost impossible to type Lingala according to that convention with a common English or French keyboard. The convention of 1976 reduced the alternative orthography of characters but did not enforce tone marking. The lack of consistent accentuation is lessened by the disambiguation due to context.

The popular orthographies seem to be a step ahead of any academic based orthography. Many Lingala books, papers, even the translation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and more recently, Internet forums, newsletters, and major websites, such as Google's Lingala, do not use Lingala specific characters (ɛ and ɔ). Tone marking is in most literary works.

Alphabet
The Lingala language has 35 letters and digraphs. The digrams each have a specific order in the alphabet, for example mza will be expected to be ordered before mba, because the digrammb follows the letter m. The letters r and h are rare but present in borrowed words. 

Kirundi

Ikirundi

Kirundi, also known as Rundi, is a dialect of the Rwanda-Rundi language spoken by nine million people in Burundi and adjacent parts of Tanzania and Congo-Kinshasa, as well as in Uganda. It is the official language of Burundi. (The Kinyarwanda dialect is the official language of neighboring Rwanda.)

The inhabitants of Rwanda and Burundi belong to several different ethnic groups: Hutu (84%), Tutsi, including Hima (15%), and Twa (1%) (apygmy people). The fact that these ethnic groups share the same language is assumed to be the result of the Hutu outnumbering the latter two groups (see Hutu for a more complete historical perspective).

Neighboring dialects of Rundi are mutually intelligible with Ha, a language spoken in western Tanzania.

Rundi is frequently cited as a language where Meeussen's rule, a rule describing a certain pattern of tonal change in Bantu languages, is active.

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.

Swahili

Kiswahili.

The Swahili language (Arabic: سواحلي), or Kiswahili,] is a Bantu language spoken by various ethnic groups that inhabit several large stretches of the Mozambique Channel coastline from northern Kenya to northern Mozambique. Closely related languages, sometimes considered dialects, are spoken in the Comoros Islands and Somalia. Although only five million or so people speak Swahili as their mother tongue, it is used as a lingua franca in much of East Africa, and the total number of speakers exceeds 140 million. Swahili serves as a national, or official language, of four nations: Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Some Swahili vocabulary is derived from Arabic through more than twelve centuries of contact with Arabic-speaking inhabitants of the coast of southeastern Africa. It has also incorporated Persian, German, Portuguese, English, and French words into its vocabulary through contact with empire builders, traders, and slavers during the past five centuries.

Origin
Swahili is traditionally regarded as being the language of Arab-ruled Zanzibar, spread along the coast by the Arab trade in various goods. Whether it was first spoken by natives of the mainland opposite Zanzibar who were brought to Zanzibar as slaves, or whether Zanzibar had a native black population, is uncertain. In post-colonial leftist/African-nationalist scholarship, this history is increasingly reinterpreted as a native black Swahili ethnic group, which already lived along a large area of the coast, engaging in its own maritime trade prior to taking up willing commerce with the Arabs.

In any case Arab traders are known to have had extensive contact with the coastal peoples from at least the 6th century A.D. and Islam began to spread along the East African Coast from at least the 9th century. There is also cultural evidence of early Persian (or Arabo-Persian) settlement on Zanzibar from Shiraz in present-day Iran. The black population of the island holds the tradition that it is descended from intermarriage of these Shirazi with natives (see Shirazi people).

People from Oman  and the Persian Gulf settled the Zanzibar Archipelago, helping spread both Islam and the Swahili language and culture with major trading and cultural centers as far as Sofala(Mozambique) and Kilwa (Tanzania) to the south, and Mombasa and Lamu in Kenya, Barawa,Merca, Kismayo and Mogadishu (Somalia) in the north, the Comoros Islands and northern Madagascar in the Indian Ocean.

Starting about 1800 A.D., the rulers of Zanzibar organized trading expeditions into the interior of the mainland, up to the various lakes in the continent's East African Rift. They soon established permanent trade routes, and Swahili-speaking merchants settled in stops along the new trade routes. For the most part, this process did not lead to genuine colonization. But colonization did occur west of Lake Malawi, in what is now Katanga Province of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, giving rise to a highly divergent dialect.

The earliest known documents written in Swahili are letters written in Kilwa in 1711 A.D.,in the Arabic script. They were sent to the Portuguese of Mozambique and their local allies. The original letters are now preserved in the Historical Archives of Goa, India.[10] Another ancient written document is an epic poem in the Arabic script titled Utendi wa Tambuka (The History of Tambuka); it is dated 1728. However, the Latin script later became standard under the influence of European colonial powers.
Colonial period

After Germany seized the region known as Tanganyika (present-day mainland Tanzania) for a colony in 1886, it took notice of the wide (but shallow) dissemination of Swahili, and soon designated Swahili as a colony-wide official administrative language. The British did not do so in neighbouring Kenya, even though they made moves in that direction. The British and Germans both sought to facilitate their rule over colonies where the inhabitants spoke dozens of different languages – thus the colonial authorities selected a single local language which they hoped the natives would find acceptable. Swahili was the only good candidate in these two colonies.

In the aftermath of Germany's defeat in World War I, it was dispossessed of all its overseas territories. Tanganyika fell into British hands. The British authorities, with the collaboration of British Christian missionary institutions active in these colonies, increased their resolve to institute Swahili as a common language for primary education and low-level governance throughout their East African colonies (Uganda, Tanganyika, Zanzibar, and Kenya). Swahili was to be subordinate to English: university education, much secondary education, and governance at the highest levels would be conducted in English.

One key step in spreading Swahili was to create a standard written language. In June 1928, an inter-territorial conference took place at Mombasa, at which the Zanzibar dialect, Kiunguja, was chosen to be the basis for standardizing Swahili. Today's standard Swahili, the version taught as a second language, is for practical purposes Zanzibar Swahili, even though there are minor discrepancies between the written standard and the Zanzibar vernacular.
[edit]Current status

Swahili has become a second language spoken by tens of millions in three countries, Tanzania, Kenya, and Congo (DRC), where it is an official or national language. The neighboring nation of Uganda made Swahili a required subject in primary schools in 1992—although this mandate has not been well implemented—and declared it an official language in 2005 in preparation for the East African Federation. Swahili, or other closely related languages, is spoken by nearly the entire population of the Comoros and by relatively small numbers of people in Burundi, Rwanda, northern Zambia, Malawi, and Mozambique. and the language was still understood in the southern ports of the Red Sea and along the coasts of southern Arabia and the Persian Gulf in the twentieth century.[13][14] In the Guthrie non-genetic classification of Bantu languages, Swahili is included under Zone G.

At the present time, some 90 percent of approximately 39 million Tanzanians speak Swahili in addition to their first languages.[15] Kenya's population is comparable as well, with a greater part of the nation being able to speak Swahili. Most educated Kenyans are able to communicate fluently in Swahili, since it is a compulsory subject in school from grade one to high school and a distinct academic discipline in many of the public and private universities.

The five eastern provinces of the Democratic Republic of Congo are Swahili speaking. Nearly half the 66 million Congolese reportedly speak it;[ and it is starting to rival Lingala as the most important national language of that country.

In Uganda, the Baganda and residents of Buganda generally do not speak Swahili, but it is in common use among the 25 million people elsewhere in the country, and is currently being implemented in schools nationwide in preparation for the East African Community.

The usage of Swahili in other countries is commonly overstated, being widespread only in market towns, among returning refugees, or near the borders of Kenya and Tanzania. Even so, Swahili speakers may number some 120 to 150 million people. Many of the world's institutions have responded to Swahili's growing prominence. It is one of the languages that feature in world radio stations such as the BBC World Service, Voice of America, Deutsche Welle, Voice of Russia, China Radio International, Radio France Internationale, Radio Sudan, and Radio South Africa.

Methali (e.g. Haraka haraka haina baraka – Hurry hurry has no blessing), i.e. "wordplay, risqué or suggestive puns and lyric rhyme, are deeply inscribed in Swahili culture, in form of Swahili parables, proverbs, and allegory".[19] Methali is uncovered globally within 'Swah' rap music. It provides the music with rich cultural, historical, and local textures and insight.

Kiswahili is the Swahili word for the language, and this is also sometimes used in English. The name Kiswahili comes from the plural sawāḥil (سواحل) of the Arabic word sāḥil (ساحل), meaning "boundary" or "coast", used as an adjective meaning "coastal dwellers". With the prefix ki-, it means "coastal language", ki- being a prefix attached to nouns of the noun class that includes languages.