Languages
Native
Kinyarwanda
100%
Secondary languages
English
20%
French
12%
Language Samples
Amakuru?
How are you? (lit. 'What is the news?')
Ni meza, urakoze.
I am fine, thank you.
Rimwe, kabiri, gatatu, kane, gatanu, gatandatu, karindwi, umunani, icyenda, icumi.
One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten.
Linguistic History
Rwanda's near-total linguistic unity is remarkable: virtually every one of its approximately 14 million citizens speaks Kinyarwanda as their first language, making it one of the most monolingual countries in Africa. This unity predates colonisation and reflects Rwanda's long history as a centralised kingdom where a single language served the entire realm. German and later Belgian colonial rule introduced French alongside Kinyarwanda, but after the 1994 genocide, Rwanda undertook a dramatic linguistic shift, joining the Commonwealth in 2009 and elevating English to co-official status. Today Rwanda operates under a trilingual official policy — Kinyarwanda, English, and French — with Kinyarwanda the undisputed language of home and heart.
Similar Languages
Kirundi
85%
Hunde
60%
Luganda
40%
Swahili
30%
Media
Kigali, Rwanda's capital, is one of Africa's cleanest and fastest-growing cities, where Kinyarwanda is universal.
Photo: Emmanuelkwizera · CC BY-SA 4.0
Did You Know
01
Rwanda is one of the few countries in the world where essentially the entire population shares a single mother tongue, giving it extraordinary social cohesion.
02
Kinyarwanda and Kirundi (Burundi's national language) are mutually intelligible to a very high degree — some linguists classify them as dialects of the same language.
03
Rwanda switched its primary language of education from French to English in 2008, one of the most rapid national language policy changes in modern history.