Kikuyu or Gikuyu ( ) (also known as Gĩgĩkũyũ) is a Bantu language spoken by the Gĩkũyũ (Agĩkũyũ) of Kenya. Kikuyu is mainly spoken in the area encompassing the former Central Province (between Nyeri, Kirinyaga, Kiambu, Murang'a and Nyahururu) and surrounding areas like Nairobi, Nakuru and Laikipia. The Kikuyu people traditionally identify their ancestral lands by the surrounding mountain ranges in Central Kenya, including Mount Kenya, which they call Kĩrĩmanyaga and the Aberdare Range.

Phonology

Symbols shown in angle brackets replace the IPA symbols which are not in the orthography.

Vowels

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! colspan="2" | Liquid

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The voiceless stops are variously aspirated. The voiced stops often realized without prenasalisation as .

Tones

Kikuyu has two level tones (high and low), a low-high rising tone, and downstep.

Vowel harmony

Kikuyu features a vowel height-based harmony system similar to that in Kiswahili. In verbs, underlying [o] and [e] may appear as [ɔ] and [ɛ] if the root of a word contains either of the latter two. The effect can be shown by contrasting the two verbs: ('hit for') and ('cool for'), where neither nor are possible.

In non-verbs, the [e] of a prefix preceding [i] in a root can morph to [i], shown in appearing as ('eye'), and [o] in a prefix appears as [u] when preceding either [u] or [ɔ]. This is shown with the prefix in the words and .

Alphabet

Kikuyu is written in a Latin alphabet. It does not use the letters f l p q s v x z, and adds the letters ĩ and ũ. The Kikuyu alphabet is:

:a b c d e g h i ĩ j k m n o r t u ũ w y

Grammar

Gĩkũyũ has subject–verb–object word order. It uses prepositions rather than postpositions. Nouns are followed by possessive and demonstrative pronouns, which can coexist in that order, and subsequently adjectives, quantifiers, and numerals, which have no order among themselves.

! Kikuyu

| Marũa Ma Ngũkũ Kũrĩ Rwĩgĩ

In the 1983 movie Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi, the character Nien Nunb speaks in the Kikuyu language.

The 2023 song Mwaki by Brazilian DJ Zerb features a Kenyan artist, Sofiya Nzau, singing in Kikuyu.

References

Bibliography

  • Armstrong, Lilias E. 1967. The Phonetic and Tonal Structure of Kikuyu. London: Published for the International African Institute by Dawsons of Pall Mall.
  • Barlow, A. Ruffell and T. G. Benson. 1975. English-Kikuyu Dictionary. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
  • Barlow, A. Ruffell. 1951. Studies in Kikuyu Grammar and Idiom. Edinburgh: William Blackwood & Sons,
  • Benson, T. G. 1964. Kikuyu–English Dictionary. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
  • Gecaga B. M. and Kirkaldy-Willis W.H. 1953. English–Kikuyu, Kikuyu–English Vocabulary. Nairobi: The Eagle Press.
  • Kihara, Claudius P. "Middle and Antipassive Voices in Gĩkũyũ (E51)." Arusha Working Papers in African Linguistics, 6(1): 17–39.
  • Leakey L. S. B. 1989. First Lessons in Kikuyu. Nairobi: Kenya Literature Bureau.
  • Mugane John 1997. A Paradigmatic Grammar of Gikuyu. Stanford, California: CSLI publications.
  • The Living Gikuyu Dictionary
  • Gikuyu alphabet and pronunciation at Omniglot
  • Muigwithania 2.0 – First Kikuyu Newspaper revived on the Internet
  • First Course in Kikuyu (vol. 1; see ref. for v2 & v3)
  • My First Gikuyu Dictionary