Kirundi
Spoken in:	Burundi
Region:	Central Africa
Total speakers:	4.6 million
Ranking:	not in top 100
Genetic classification:	Niger-Congo  Atlantic-Congo   Volta-Congo    Benue-Congo     Bantoid      Southern       Narrow Bantu        Central         Kirundi
Official status
Official language of:	Burundi
Regulated by:	--
Language codes
ISO 639-1	rn
ISO 639-2	run
SIL	RUD

Introduction

Kirundi (also written Rundi) is a Bantu language (D62 in Guthrie's classification) spoken by some 6 million people in Burundi and adjacent parts of Tanzania and Congo-Kinshasa, as well as in Uganda. 85% of the speakers are Hutu, 15% are Tutsi.

Kirundi is closely related to Kinyarwanda, the main language of neighbouring country Rwanda and to Giha , a language spoken in western Tanzania.

The inhabitants of Rwanda and Burundi belong to three different ethnic groups: Bahutu, Batutsi, and Batwa (a pygmy people). The fact that these ethnic groups share the same language is assumed to be the result of the Bahutu outnumbering the latter two groups (see Bahutu for a more complete historical perspective).

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

References

• Meeussen, A.E. (1959) Essai de grammaire Rundi Annales du Musée Royal du Congo Belge, Série Sciences Humaines - Linguistique, vol. 24. Tervuren.

External link

• Ethnologue on Rundi http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=RUD