Kinyarwanda Alphabet

Kinyarwanda, Ikinyarwanda in the language itself, uses the 24-letter Latin alphabet, excluding q and x. The 24 basic letters are all on an ordinary English or French keyboard; combinations of ordinary letters represent its additional consonant sounds.

Native words use 23 letters: a b c d e f g h i j k m n o p r s t u v w y z. The letter l is rare and turns up mostly in names and borrowings, such as Kigali and Repubulika (republic); q and x appear only in foreign names and words. The collection includes all 26 for foreign names and quotations; CLDR lists A–Z as characters in its Kinyarwanda locale, not as the standard alphabet.

The five vowels a e i o u sound much as in Spanish or Italian. Kinyarwanda distinguishes short and long vowels and high and low tone, and both can change a word's meaning. These features are usually unmarked in standard spelling, but the 2014 official orthography requires vowel-length and tone marks where omission could cause confusion or mispronunciation. In scientific writing, high tone may be shown with a circumflex and long vowels by doubling the vowel.

Kinyarwanda pronunciation: cy, jy, sh, shy, ny and rw

c has the ch sound of church. cy is a separate Kinyarwanda sound, as in icyayi (tea) and cyane (very), as in Murakoze cyane, thank you very much. jy is another special sound, as in kujya (to go). sh is the sh of ship, while shy is a distinct special sound, as in umushyitsi (guest).

ny is one sound, the ny of canyon and the ñ of Spanish, as in Nyamirambo, a neighbourhood of Kigali. A w or y after a consonant rounds or softens it, which is how the country's name begins: Rwanda, and words such as ubwiza (beauty) or ryiza (good). Groups like mb, nd, ng, nk and nz occur in many words, including inka (cow) and inzu (house), and ts and pf are single sounds too, as in gutsinda (to win).

The r is a light tap, as in Spanish pero. Kinyarwanda does not tell r and l apart, so native spelling needs only r; that is the reason l is so rare.

The apostrophe and quotation marks in Kinyarwanda

One punctuation mark that matters a great deal in Kinyarwanda spelling is the apostrophe. When a short word such as na (and, with) or ya (of) meets a word beginning with a vowel, its own vowel drops and an apostrophe marks the gap: na abana becomes n’abana (and the children), and the country's official name is Repubulika y’u Rwanda, Republic of Rwanda. A birthday wish is Isabukuru nziza y’amavuko!

That name shows another habit: the country is u Rwanda, with a small u written as a separate word, and in Rwanda is mu Rwanda. Both the straight apostrophe ' and the curly ’ are used; they look alike to a reader but are different characters to a search engine, so pick one and keep it in names and titles.

For quotations, Kinyarwanda text uses both curly quotes “ ” and the French guillemets « »; Unicode's CLDR gives « » as the default pair for Kinyarwanda, which fits the long use of French in Rwanda. Both pairs are here.

How to type Kinyarwanda on a keyboard or phone

There is no separate Kinyarwanda keyboard to install for the letters: an English (US or UK) or French layout types the 24 basic alphabet letters. Tone and vowel-length signs may also be required where omitting them could cause confusion or mispronunciation; the steps below show how to type the curly punctuation. On Windows, hold Alt and type 0146 on the number pad for ’, 0147 and 0148 for “ ”, and 0171 and 0187 for « ». On a Mac, Option+Shift+] gives ’, Option+[ and Option+Shift+[ give “ ”, and Option+\ and Option+Shift+\ give « ».

On an iPhone, Smart Punctuation (Settings → General → Keyboard) turns ' into ’ and " into curly quotes as you type; holding down the quote key on iPhone and on many Android keyboards shows « » as well. If your phone keyboard lists Kinyarwanda among its languages, adding it gives word suggestions and spell-check. In HTML, ’ is ’, “ ” are “ and ”, and « » are « and ».

Where Kinyarwanda is spoken

Kinyarwanda is the national language of Rwanda and one of its four official languages, with English, French and Swahili. Almost everyone in Rwanda speaks it, which makes the country one of the few in Africa where nearly the whole population shares a single home language. The people are Abanyarwanda, one Rwandan is an Umunyarwanda, and the language is Ikinyarwanda.

Unicode's CLDR estimates about 12 million speakers: some 10.5 million in Rwanda, about 1 million in Uganda, where the Bafumbira of Kisoro District in the south-west speak it as Rufumbira, and about 400,000 in DR Congo, mostly in North Kivu, where a variety called Kinyabwisha is spoken. These are estimates, and Rwanda's own population has grown past them.

Kinyarwanda is a Bantu language of the Great Lakes. Kirundi, the language of Burundi, is so close that speakers of the two understand each other, and it has its own Rundi collection. Luganda, Rukiga (Chiga), Runyankole and Swahili are cousins with collections of their own, and the Rwanda, Uganda and Congo - Kinshasa collections gather each country's flag and emoji.