- Also spoken in
- Kenya
- Script
- Latin
Where it's spoken
Kikuyu is described as a Bantu language spoken mainly in the Central Province of Kenya between Nyeri and Nairobi. Kenya's constitution names Kiswahili as the national language and Kiswahili and English as the official languages, and it commits the State to promote the development and use of indigenous languages.
Sources
- Constitution of Kenya, 2010 — Comparative Constitutions Project — Art. 7 — national and official languages
- Omniglot — Kikuyu (Gĩkũyũ)
Script & pronunciation
Kikuyu is written in the Latin script, using a version of the African reference alphabet that was first proposed at a UNESCO conference in the second half of the twentieth century. The app's cards use the letters ĩ and ũ, as in the app's word for water, maaĩ, which the dictionary Wiktionary lists as an alternative spelling of maĩ. This app uses maaĩ, for example in the card for "Please give me drinking water".
Sources
Grammar essentials
Basic word order is subject–verb–object, and the negative morpheme is placed before the verb. Nouns belong to numbered classes, for example mũtumia ("woman") is a class 1 noun with the plural atumia. Adjectives change their prefix to agree with the class of the noun: Wiktionary's table for the adjective "good" gives mwega for class 1 and kĩega for class 7. This app's card for "You are a very good person" has Ũrĩ mũndũ mwega mũno, with mwega in the form for a person, and its card for "Good (thing)" has Kĩndũ kĩega, with kĩega in the class 7 form.
Sources
- WALS Online (Dryer, Matthew S. & Haspelmath, Martin, eds.) — Feature 81A, "Order of Subject, Object and Verb," Kikuyu datapoint — Value: SVO (citing Barlow 1960)
- WALS Online (Dryer, Matthew S. & Haspelmath, Martin, eds.) — Feature 143A, "Order of Negative Morpheme and Verb," Kikuyu datapoint — Value: NegV (citing Barlow 1960)
- Wiktionary — -ega (Kikuyu)
- Wiktionary — mũtumia (Kikuyu)
Politeness & etiquette
The app's word for "Please (I beg you)" is Ndagũthaitha, which the app says is put before a request to one person, with Ndamũthaitha for several people. Wiktionary lists the verb thaitha (infinitive gũthaitha) as "to beseech". The common greeting Wĩ mwega? is glossed on Wiktionary as "how are you?" (literally "are you good?"), with the reply ĩĩ ndĩ mwega, "yes, I am fine"; the app's card for it says that several people take a different form.