Kinyarwanda is universal among the native population of Rwanda and is mutually intelligible with Kirundi, the national language of neighbouring Burundi.

In 2010, the Rwanda Academy of Language and Culture (RALC)[7] was established to help promote and sustain Kinyarwanda.

The organization attempted an orthographic reform in 2014, but it was met with pushback due to their perceived top-down and political nature, among other reasons.

Like many Bantu languages, it has a two-way contrast between high and low tones (low-tone syllables may be analyzed as toneless).

The realization of tones in Kinyarwanda is influenced by a complex set of phonological rules.

Except in a few morphological contexts, the sequences 'ki' and 'ke' may be pronounced interchangeably as [ki] and [ke] or [ci] and [ce] according to speaker's preference.

Consider the following excerpt of the Rwandan anthem: Reka tukurate tukuvuge ibigwi wowe utubumbiye hamwe twese Abanyarwanda uko watubyaye berwa, sugira, singizwa iteka.

would be pronounced as Reka tukurate tukuvug' ibigwi wow' utubumiye hamwe twes' abanyarwand' uko watubyaye berwa, sugira singizw' iteka.

Even when Rwanda is pronounced [ɾwaːnda] rather than [ɾɡwaːnda], the onset is a sequence, not a labialized [ɾʷ].

[15] One of these more direct causation devices is the deletion of what is called a "neutral" morpheme -ik-, which indicates state or potentiality.