Kinyarwanda and Kirundi: On Colonial Divisions, Discourses of National Belonging, and Language Boundaries
The development of the Bantu languages Kinyarwanda and Kirundi is entangled within the colonial histories of Rwanda and Burundi, first under German and then Belgian rule. From the turn of the twentieth century on, missionaries compiled grammars and dictionaries of the two mutually intelligible lang...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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University of Hradec Králové, Philosophical Faculty
2019-07-01
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| Series: | Modern Africa |
| Online Access: | http://edu.uhk.cz/africa/index.php/ModAfr/article/view/264 |
| Summary: | The development of the Bantu languages Kinyarwanda and Kirundi is entangled within the colonial histories of Rwanda and Burundi, first under German and then Belgian rule. From the turn of the twentieth century on, missionaries compiled grammars and dictionaries of the two mutually intelligible languages, contributing
to the development and instrumentalisation of two prestigious varieties out of a larger dialect continuum. In this contribution, I trace the missionary and colonial activities of corpus planning and textualisation and summarise how Kinyarwanda and Kirundi turned into official languages with distinct linguistic boundaries. The central research question is how speakers of Kinyarwanda and Kirundi thereafter came to be identified as “Rwandans” or as “Burundians,” with each language indexing a specific national categorisation. Tentatively, I contrast these developments with contemporary fluid practices in multilingual neighbourhoods.
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| ISSN: | 2336-3274 2570-7558 |