Rendille language

Rendille
Afi Renꞌdille
Native toKenya
RegionEastern Province
EthnicityRendille
Native speakers
96,000 (2019 census)
Latin
Language codes
ISO 639-3rel
Glottologrend1243

Rendille (also known as Rendile, Randile) is an Afro-Asiatic language spoken by the Rendille people inhabiting northern Kenya. It is part of the family's Cushitic branch.

The Ariaal sub-group of the Rendille, who are of mixed Nilotic and Cushitic descent, speak the Nilo-Saharan Samburu language of the Samburu Nilotes, near whom they live.

Phonology

Consonants

Labial Dental/
alveolar		 Retroflex Post-alv./
Palatal		 Velar Uvular Pharyngeal Glottal
Nasal m n̪ ɲ ŋ
Plosive/
Affricate		 voiceless t̪ tɕ k (q) ʔ
voiced b d̪ ɖ dʑ g
Fricative f s x ħ ~ ʕ h
Lateral l
Trill r
Glide w j
  • /tɕ/ can be heard as [ɕ] by some speakers.
  • Some speakers always pronounce /x/ as a uvular stop [q].
  • [ʕ] can be heard as a free variant of /ħ/, or when /ħ/ is heard in intervocalic position.
  • Voiced sounds become voiceless when in word-final position.
  • /b/ can be pronounced as [p] when preceding /ħ/, or as a fricative [β] in intervocalic position.
  • /r/ can also freely be devoiced as [r̥] in word-initial position, and is always heard as devoiced in word-final position.
  • /d̪/ can freely be heard as an affricate [d̪ð], and can also be heard as a fricative [ð] in intervocalic position.
  • /x/ can also be heard as an affricate [qχ] when following nasal sounds.

Vowels

Front CentralBack
Close i iː u uː
Mid e eː o oː
Open a aː
  • Vowels /i, u, e, o/ are commonly heard as lax [ɪ, ʊ, ɛ, ɔ].

Alphabet

The Rendille alphabet has 26 letters:

Rendille alphabet
LetterABChDDhEFGHH'IJK
abchddhefghh'ijk
Phoneme/a//b//tʃ//ɖ//d̪//e//f//g//ħ//h//i//ʤ//k/
LetterKhLMNNg'NyORSTUWY
khlmnng'nyorstuwy
Phoneme/x//l//m//n//ŋ//ɲ//ɔ//r//s//t//u//w//j/

Long vowels are written doubled. Tone is phonemic, and high tone can be written as an acute accent ( ́), while low tone is not marked.

References

  1. 1 2 Rendille at Ethnologue (25th ed., 2022) Closed access icon
  2. 1 2 Ethnologue - Rendille
  3. ↑ Parris, Ronald G. (1994). Rendille. Rosen Publishing Group. pp. 13. ISBN 0823917630.
  4. 1 2 Rhonda L. Hartell, ed. (1993). "The Alphabets of Africa" (PDF). SIL Global. Dakar: UNESCO and Summer Institute of Linguistics. p. 187. Retrieved 2026-03-30.

Further reading