Forgive my bluntness, but you are the one parading your ignorance, my friend.

The Gikuyu language is written using the Latin alphabet, as are many other languages.

If you studied language as you claim, I am sure you would know that what is under discussion here is not the alphabet but the orthography of the Gikuyu language.

I believe the orthography of Gikuyu was set by Italian Missionaries, and later revised by the Irish and Scottish priests - at least I vaguely recall either Cannon Cagnolo or Whitely writing as much.

This could explain how we came to inherit some Mediterranean vowels and consonants, like the bilabial fricative, 'b' in 'baba' - similar to the Spanish 'v' sound in say, Valencia, instead of the more common 'labial dental 'f'.

Another example is the 'w' vowel sound as in Wainaina. If the French had done the Gikuyu orthography this would be written Ouainanina.

Similarly nasal sounds like 'n' in Njeri, 'm' in Mbuthia, 'ny' as in Nyambura, the soft 'ng' in Ng'ang'a (or its hard variant), would have been lost if say the the Gikuyu orthography had been based on English (they don't have these sounds).

As for the ũ and ĩ, that one I leave to other experts. In fact Kenyatta tried to change this, for 'o' and 'e' respectively as it makes more sense. Clearly it didn't take.

Regarding the difference in pronunciation there two Bantu language families, the 'ba' and the 'wa' family (I am plagiarizing Ochieng here) - owing to the influence of past migratory direction, time of arrival and consonant drift.

Gikuyu, Kikamba, Swahili ( I think all Bantu languages on the Eastern seaboard) belong to the 'wa' family, which is why the people of Kenya are called, Wakenya, not Bakenya.

By the way consonant drift provides persuasive proof that Gikuyu is a derivative of Kikamba. In fact the Gikuyu tribe is a recent creation - as recent as 200 years ago - created for 'political' reasons. (Some of the bigots from Nyumba ya Muumbi and elsewhere need to remember this).

We are seeing a similar process of 'political' amalgamation among the Luyia and the Kalenjin today (the reverse process, as with the Miji Kenda, is more common). How this will influence the language remains to be seen.

But I digress.

@The clown, if you are pissed off, I challenge you to insult me in proto-Bantu.

Somebody give us an app for pronunciations then

The Rware people pronounce it as Shege. The Southern Sege. Or something very close to that.

Then in the north, some words change even the usually non contentious vowels. e.g some Northerners will say mutimia for woman in place of the conventional mutumia.

The t sound also very different!

Na mnasema anthropology haisaidii

Political correctness? Should revert to the old title since the new one is a confused title that doesn't reflect the content of the thread.

The problem is that it is not very practical especially in cosmopolitan neighborhoods. What's more annoying is that the British somehow got it into our heads that speaking in our local languages is inferior or dumb or backward.

@nesta, that's the wrong way to go about it. A better approach is to start with getting teachers of the various languages. Then offer the languages as electives depending on availability of teachers - the same way we do with the European languages.

If Alliance High has a Maa teacher, then it offers Maa [aka, Kimaasai], If Maseno High has a Kamba teacher, then it offers Kikamba etc.

But please note, I am not saying that any Maa speaking teacher or Kamba speaking teacher can teach Maa or Kikamba, respectively. NO! After all, not all English speaking teachers can teach English - not even in England!

The Maa teacher at Alliance might very well be a Luo by tribe, in the same way that the English teacher there might be a Mumeru!

Most kikuyu words are similar to xhoha, swahili and rwandese eg Ngombe, kuku, maji.
The interahamwe in rwandese is directly translated to turihamwe in kikuyu, meaning we are together.
The Bostwana/setswana language, a cow is ngombe, meat is nyama, chicken is kuku,water is metsi ,similar to kikuyu.