Kikuyu language

Kikuyu or Gikuyu (Gikuyu: Gĩkũyũ [ɣēkōjó]) (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.

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

The voiceless stops are variously aspirated. The voiced stops /ᵐb ⁿd ᶮdʒ ᵑɡ/ often realized without prenasalisation as [b d dʒ ɡ].

Kikuyu has two level tones (high and low), a low-high rising tone, and downstep.^[4]

Gĩkũyũ has subject–verb–object word order. It uses prepositions rather than postpositions.^[5] 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.^[6]

Gĩkũyũ has 17 noun classes.

Class 1 (prefix mũ-) comprises animate/human nouns and is singular, while class 2 (prefix a-) comprises animate/human nouns but is plural. Kinship terms and some other words belong to these classes but take no prefixes.

Class 3 (prefix mũ-) comprises nature/landscape words and others that are not semantically related, and is singular. Class 4 (prefix mĩ-) comprises the same words, but is plural.

Class 5 (prefix rĩ- if stem is vowel initial, i- if consonant-initial) comprises plant/landscape words and others that do not fit the pattern, and is singular. Class 6 (prefix ma-) comprises the same words, but is plural. Occasionally, class 6 nouns have the prefix marĩ-, perhaps because the class 5 form is reanalyzed as the stem. Nouns of classes 1, 9, 11, 12, 14, and 15 can be pluralised with the class 6 form.

Class 7 (prefix gĩ- if stem is t, k, c, or th initial, kĩ- otherwise) is an augmentative class with some inherent, not especially augmented members. Class 8 (prefix ci- if stem is vowel initial, i- if consonant initial) is the same, but plural. These classes' prefixes can be used to augment nouns of other classes.

Class 9 comprises most animals, most loanwords, a few body parts, and semantically unrelated others. Class 10 is the same, but plural. Because words of these classes begin with nasal or unnasalisable consonants, and lose their nasality when marked with a different class prefix, the proposed prefix is nasalisation. This prefix cannot always be applied to loanwords.

Class 11 (prefix rũ-) comprises long, thin, or string-like nouns, as well as others that do not fit the pattern. Its default plural is class 10, with occasional class 6 forms. It is hypothesized that if the prefix rũ- is added to a stem that already begins with rũ, the prefix is deleted. The class 6/11 plurals vary just as the Class 5/6 plurals do: the Class 6 prefix, ma-, attaches sometimes to the noun stem itself, and sometimes to the class 11 form.

Class 12 (prefix ga- if stem is t, k, c, or th initial, ka- otherwise) is a diminutive class with some inherent, not especially diminutive members. Class 13 (prefix tũ-) is the same, but plural. These classes' prefixes can be used to diminutise nouns of other classes.

Class 14 (ũ-) comprises abstract concepts and semantically unrelated others, and is pluralised by class 6.

Class 15 (prefix gũ- if stem is t, k, c, or th initial, kũ- otherwise) comprises only body parts and verbal infinitives—more semantically and syntactically motivated than other classes. It is pluralised, when possible, by class 6.

Class 16 (prefix ha-) is a definite locative class. Class 17 (prefix kũ-/gũ-) is an indefinite locative class. These classes can be singular or plural based on context.^[6]

Adjectives agree with the noun via adjective class prefixes (usually identical to the noun class prefixes). Other modifiers do so via agreement class prefixes, which are often simply the vowel of the noun class prefix.

Personal pronouns may take the place of a noun or a noun phrase. Since person and noun class are marked on verbs, they are usually only used emphatically or in response to questions. Except for those of classes 3 and 14, the pronouns are formed by adding agreement class prefixes to the stem o.

The dependent pronoun - 'and/with X' - is formed by adding comitative preposition to the relevant personal pronouns.

The possessive pronoun is formed by adding the relevant possessive stem to the agreement class prefix of the possessed noun.

Relative pronouns are formed by adding the relevant agreement class prefix to the relative stem.

Demonstrative pronouns come in distal, proximal, and anaphoric forms. Relative pronouns are written identically to distal demonstratives, but are distinguished by vowel length - the first syllable of a relative pronoun is short, while the first syllable of a distal demonstrative is long.

Adjectives are comparatively rare, and do not cover even every colour. Qualities are usually expressed instead as associative constructions, which connect two nouns or noun phrases where the first noun (head) is modified by the second. The associative is formed by prefixing the stem a with the agreement class prefix of the head noun. It can also denote possession, location, and ordinal numerals.^[6]

Numerals 11-19 are formed with the construction 'ten and X'. The final numeral, if it inflects, agrees with the noun being counted. However, if the final numeral is 1, it agrees with the singular class of the noun being counted, because 1 is singular, even if the overall number being formed is not.^[6]

Verbs can be marked for focus, noun class agreement, negation, reflexivity, reciprocality, causativity, intensive meanings, reversive meanings, applicative (valency increasing) meanings, tense, and aspect.

Often a clear division between derivational and inflecitonal marking in verbs is unclear and depends largely on the individual verbs themselves, as in other Eastern Bantu languages like Kiswahili. Some examples of inflectional marking include:^[3]

Applicative suffix -ĩr-
Banga rwĩmbo - Plan a song
Bangĩra rwĩmbo - Plan for a song

Reflexive prefix -ĩ-
Ringa kĩongo - Hit the head
Ĩringa kĩongo - Hit oneself on the head

Transitivizing suffix -i-
coka mũciĩ-inĩ - return to the house
cokia mũciĩ - return the house

Causative suffix -ith-
thoma - read/study
thomithia - teach/make study (often the causative suffix cannot exist without the transitivizer).

Reciprocal suffix -an-
twende - let us love
twendane - let us love each other

However, some of these affixes can also serve to add derivational meaning to certain verbs by changing their meaning, for example:

Applicative suffix -ĩr-
tũma Kamarũ - send Kamarũ
tũmĩra Kamarũ - use Kamarũ

Transitivizing suffix -i-
enda njomo yaku - love your sword
endia njomo yaku - sell your sword

Reciprocal suffix -an- + -i-
cema - sneak/creep/walk stealthily
cemania - meet up

Tenses include remote past (before yesterday), past (yesterday), recent past (earlier today), present, near future (later today), and remote future (after today). There also exists an 'uncertain future' marker for verbs that denotes a time not known by one or both speakers.

Aspects include habitual, imperfective, completive, and perfect, and progressive. Sequential, a subtype of progressive, denotes events that occur in a sequence. There is also a marker for persistive events.

The order of affixes on verbs is thus:

Focus marker - subject class - negation - tense - object class/reflexive mark - stem reduplication - verb stem - one or more of the many suffixes of unspecific nature - final vowel

Many of the suffixes listed are only available to certain verbs, and whether they are derivational or inflectional also changes on a verb to verb basis. Some of them may change form slightly due to vowel harmony, adding further irregularity to their function.

Focus marker, subject agreement particles exist for 1st and 2nd person, the discourse participants,

N- is a flexible morpheme that usually modifies the following morpheme by either:

• adding a preceding nj- if the following phoneme is any vowel but u
• adding a preceding ny- if the following morpheme is u
• adding a preceding n- to the following y
• prenasalising the following t into nd, and k and g into ng
• converting the following ʃ to nj

The subject agreement is otherwise based on noun class. A verb can exhibit noun class agreement for all arguments, but agrees less commonly with non-human nouns.

In addition to active and passive voices, there is a middle voice with an intermediate connotation.^[6]

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^[7]

There is notable literature written in the Kikuyu language. For instance, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o's Mũrogi wa Kagogo (Wizard of the Crow) is the longest known book written in Kikuyu. Other authors writing in Kikuyu are Gatua wa Mbũgwa and Waithĩra wa Mbuthia. Mbuthia has published various works in different genres—essays, poetry, children stories and translations—in Kikuyu. The late Wahome Mutahi also sometimes wrote in Kikuyu. Also, Gakaara wa Wanjaũ wrote his popular book, Mau Mau Author in Detention, which won a Noma Award in 1984.^[10]

In the 1983 movie Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi, the character Nien Nunb speaks in the Kikuyu language.^[11]

The 2023 song Mwaki by Brazilian DJ Zerb features a Kenyan artist, Sofiya Nzau, singing in Kikuyu.^[12]

• 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