Languages in Rwanda

Before English was recognized as an official language in 2008, Rwanda had already two official languages of Kinyarwanda or Ruanda and French. Kinyarwanda is widely spoken in the country, while French is the language of the educated Rwandans. Kinyarwanda is spoken by about 6,400,000 people in the country and by a significant number in its border countries Burundi, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Tanzania and Uganda. Kinyarwanda is mutually intelligible or capable of being understood with Kirundi, the official language of Burundi where it is spoken by about four million of its population. Rwanda’s ethnic groups Bwisha, Mulenge, Twa and Rufumbira also speak Kinyarwanda.

​Kinyarwanda has a total number of speakers at 7,504,900 in all countries of Central Africa, while Kirundi is the dialect of the Hutu and Tutsi ethnic groups, including those in the country. As a Bantu language, Kinyarwanda has a standardized spelling that has been in use as far back as 1940 and an orthography that shows that such sequences as “ki” and “ke” may be pronounced as “chi” and “che,” and “rw” as in Rwanda is often pronounced as “rgw.”

​Grammatically, Ruanda has 10 noun class pairs and verb infinitives that begin with “gu” or “ku” and formed into a “kw” before the vowel. Translated into English, Kiryarwanda will find it hard to be understood by non-Ruanda speakers: Examples of these are: “yego” for yes, “oya” for no, “mwaramutse” for hi, good morning, “ubu” for now, “ejo” for yesterday, and “ejo hazaza” for tomorrow.