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Kirundi or Rundi is a Bantu language with about 4.5 million speakers, most of whom live in Burundi.  There are also some speakers of Kirundi in Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda and Congo-Kinshasa. Kirundi is closely related to more or less mutually intelligible with Kinyarwanda.

There has been a standardized spelling system for Kirundi since the 1940s, though Roman Catholic and Protestant missions use slightly different systems.


Kirundi (also written Rundi or Urundi) is a Bantu language (D62 in Guthrie's classification) spoken by some 6 million people in Burundi and adjacent parts of Tanzania and Congo-Kinshasa, as well as in Uganda.  84% of the speakers are Hutu, 15% are Tutsi and 1% are Twa.  Kirundi is one of the official languages of Burundi, along with French.


Kirundi is closely related to Kinyarwanda, the main language of neighboring country Rwanda and to Giha, a language spoken in western Tanzania.  Kirundi and Kinyarwanda are mutually intelligible.

The inhabitants of Rwanda and Burundi belong to three different ethnic groups: Bahutu, Batutsi, and Batwa (a pygmy people). The fact that these ethnic groups share the same language is assumed to be the result of the Bahutu outnumbering the latter two groups (see Bahutu for a more complete historical perspective).

Kirundi is frequently cited as a language where Meeussen's rule, a rule describing a certain pattern of tonal change in Bantu languages, is active.