Wiktionary:About Rwanda-Rundi
1=Language considerations (Rwanda-Rundi)Please see Module:checkparams for help with this warning.
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This is a Wiktionary policy, guideline or common practices page. Specifically it is a policy think tank, working to develop a formal policy. |
| Policies – Entries: CFI - EL - NORM - NPOV - QUOTE - REDIR - DELETE. Languages: LT - AXX. Others: BLOCK - BOTS - VOTES. |
Rwanda-Rundi is a Bantu language spoken in East Africa. This page details policies regarding Rwanda-Rundi entries.
Dialects
[edit]The two principal dialects of Rwanda-Rundi are the standard language of Kigali and Bujumbura. They can be referred to in entries as Rwanda and Rundi respectively in entries, but must be referred to as {{label|Kinyarwanda}} and {{label|Kirundi}} in context labels for proper categorization. All entries that do not mark which dialect they are from using {{label}} should be used in both major dialects. These dialects are considered coequal and can each have lemma entries.
Tone and length marking
[edit]Diacritics should not be in the entry title or in links, but they should be in the headword line. In order to represent both tone and length on the headword line, we follow a variation of the usual Rundi practice. Here is a table of that usage with the example vowel a.
| Low | High | Rising | Falling | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Short vowel | a | á | ||
| Long vowel | ā | ā́* | ǎ | â |
* High long vowels (that is, /áá/), are only found in Rundi. Other sources write this as ä.
The long vowel notations â and ǎ are equivalent to /áa/ and /aá/ respectively, as shown in many Rwandan sources; we use the diacritics to avoid respelling words. This is intended to cover the spoken language of Kigali and Bujumbura; tonal variations in smaller dialects should not be covered in the headword line, but instead shown only in IPA in the Pronunciation section.
This system involves only marking phonemic tone, but marking phonetic vowel length (i.e. even when completely predictable, like in umuntu: umūntu).