Kikuyu language · Lablypedia

Phonology

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

Vowels

Consonants

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

Tones

Like most Bantu languages, Kikuyu is a tonal language. It has two level tones (high and low), a low-high rising tone, and downstep. Though most syllables have an underlying tone, some have no underlying tone and instead are the object of tone spreading.

Tone can often be integral to clear communication in Kikuyu, especially in verb phrases where prefixes tend to cause otherwise distinct verb roots to appear similar or even identical if not for tone.

Downstep

Kikuyu exhibits tonal downstep that can be triggered either by the presence of an assertive verb or by a floating low tone hanging at the end of certain nouns. The floating low tones are a result of historical tone shift which was productive until the mid-20th century at latest, causing the tones of all syllables to shift rightward by one step. If a word ended in a low tone, the low tone would be detached and would no longer be traditionally pronounced outside of downstep. If one ended in a high tone preceded by another high tone, the floating high tone would be deleted. However, if the high tone was preceded by a low tone it would cause the formation of the low-rising tone seen at the end of many Kikuyu words.

In Kikuyu, the presence of downstep can trigger three possible interactions with the following tones:

In the conditions /Hꜜ#H/, /Lꜜ#H/ and /Lꜜ#L/, lowering of the next tone occurs. This lowers the entire F0 value of the phonological phrase, meaning the lowered L tones are audibly identical to a super-low (SL) tone, and lowered H tones are audibly identical to an L tone.
In the conditions /Hꜜ#L(L...)H/ and /Hꜜ#L(L...)/, since the sequence [/HꜜL/] is banned, all the following underlying L tones are first raised to H tones until an underlying H tone is reached, which is then the object of downstep. This is often referred to as unbounded H-tone spreading.

Negative verbs appear to have unpredictable downstep patterns. As negative verbs may or may not be assertive depending on the speakers intention during utterance, more research is needed to determine the source of verbal downstep. Additionally, a body of data on the tonal structure of most Gĩkũyũ nouns has not yet been assembled, aside from T.G. Benson's 1964 dictionary, which has clashing data with sources such as Clements 1984.

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: hũrĩra ('hit for') and horera ('cool for'), where neither *horĩra nor *hũrera are possible.

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

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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.

Noun classes

Gĩkũyũ has 17 noun classes.

Occasionally, class 6 nouns have the prefix marĩ- or mai-, perhaps because the class 5 form is reanalyzed as the stem.

In class 11, it is hypothesized that if the prefix rũ- is added to a stem that already begins with rũ, the prefix is deleted. When the plural is class 6, the ma- sometimes attaches to the noun stem itself, and sometimes to the class 11 form.

Classes 7/8 and 12/13 prefixes can be attached to either the stem or prefix of an existing noun to convey anaugmentative or a diminutive, respectively. When this happens with classes 9/10, the prenasalisation is removed (eg. mbakũri 'bowl' becomes kabakũri 'small bowl').

Adjectives and pronouns

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/demonstrative - 'and/with X' - is formed by adding the comitative preposition na 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.

Numbers

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.

Verbs

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 there is no clear division between derivational and inflecitonal marking in verbs. Distinguishing between the two depends largely on the individual verbs themselves, and rarely on context. Some examples of affixes that can have both derivational and inflecitonal implications are:

Applicative suffix -ĩr

mũ-tũm-ĩr-e

N1.OBJ-send-APP-IMP

mũ-ciari

N1-parent

ũ-horo

N14-news

'send to your parent the news'

mũ-tũmĩr-e

N14.OBJ-use-IMP

ũ-horo

N14-news

ũ-cio

N14-DIST.DEM

'use that news'

As shown above, in some verbs, it can be valid for the same affix to act both derivationally and inflectionally. This ability is not common among verbs in Gĩkũyũ.

Reversive middle voice suffix -ũk-

mũ-rango

N3-door

w-a-hing-ũka

N3-IMM.PERF-close-REVERS.MID

'the door has opened' (literally: the door has become unclosed)

Wangũi

nĩ-a-ra-in-ũka

FOC-N1.SUB-PRES.IMPERF-sing/dance-REVERS.MID

'Wangũi is returning home' (literally: Wangũi is becoming no longer singing/dancing')

The meaning behind this word ina is likely derived from the idea that, in Gĩkũyũ, children away from home are said to be 'out singing/dancing', similar to how in English children are 'out playing'. This way, inũka carries a meaning similar to 'be done singing and go home'. Among speakers, the meaning mostly just means 'go home', regardless of whether someone was singing or not.

Tense and aspect

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

The most common order of affixes on verbs is thus:

A change in the order of suffixes in a verb can also change the meaning, where each suffix acts like a modifier for the previous ones.

Many of the affixes listed are only available to certain verbs. Some of them may change form slightly due to vowel harmony, adding further irregularity to the verbs' structural patterns.

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

Third person concord is not listed since that falls under the noun class agreement described earlier.

N is a flexible morpheme that causes the appearance of a nasal consonant depending on its environment:

Non-verb specific interactions with consonants include:

/Nβ/, / → [ᵐb]
/Nt/, /Nɾ/ → [ⁿd]
/Nk/ → [ᵑg]
/Nʃ/ → [ⁿʤ]
/Nð/ → [∅ð]
/Nɣ/ → [ŋ] or [ᵑg]
/Nj/ → [ɲ]

Interactions with vowels may often be unstable.

The appearance of N with relation to the initial vowels on verbs occasionally causes an unpredictable consonant to be realized:

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.

Sample phrases

Sample text

Literature

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.

In popular culture

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.