No one language dominates across Kenya. Of course, the multilingual nation uses lingua francas—common languages meant to unite the population of a linguistically diverse country—and those come in the form of Swahili and English. But most Kenyans don’t speak these languages natively. Rather, they speak one of the 65+ indigenous languages that dot the Kenyan territory, many of which retain vigorous usage despite their minority status. One such example is Nandi, one of Kenya’s biggest languages.
Nandi is not to be confused with Nande, a completely unrelated language spoken by millions in the North Kivu province of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Instead, Nandi, which is also known as Cemual, is entirely contained within Kenya, where it constitutes the native language of around 950,000 people. However, as a minority language, Nandi lacks the resources of bigger languages in Kenya and Africa more broadly, which has resulted in a dearth of translation services for the tongue. That’s why we at TranslationServices.com have brought in our own Nandi translation team.
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A bit more information on the Nandi language
Spoken in western Kenya, Nandi is part of the Kalenjin languages, which form a branch in the Nilo–Saharan language family. Nandi is closely related to Terik, Keiyo, and Tugen, collectively known as the Markweta languages, and a bit less closely related to Kipsigis, the biggest Kalenjin language. As for the precise areas where Nandi is spoken, you’ll find native speakers in the districts of Nandi, Uasin Gishu, and Trans-Nzoia, in the highlands of western Kenya.
In terms of grammar, Nandi exhibits a verb-subject-object word order, which is common among Nilotic languages, even though it only accounts for about 9% of languages globally. Though the verb usually comes first, it’s possible for other elements of the sentence to precede the verb for emphasis, in which case they’re marked with a special topicalization postposition. Nandi features various noun cases, but nominative is the only case that receives marking—although topicalized subjects lose their nominative marking. Nandi and its Kalenjin cousins are unique among verb-initial languages in that they express possession with transitive verb like “have,” like in English, whereas many other languages express possession by saying the possessed object is “at” or “with” the possessor. But these complications need not stress you out—our Nandi translators are native speakers and know how to handle the inner workings of this Kenyan language.
We’ve built a Nandi translation team to handle any type of translation.
It doesn’t matter why you’re looking for Nandi translation services—we’re determined to help you. That’s why we’ve sourced our Nandi translators from all over western Kenya, taking care to encapsulate the different dialects and regional fluctuations in our diverse range of native-speaking translators. While they may differ in precise dialect and translation specialization, they’re united in their love for their language and their passion for helping connect the Nandi people with the outside world, providing pinpoint translation services both to and from Nandi.
You may be looking for academic translation services, business translation services, literary translation services, or another type of translation specialty. No matter what kind of Nandi translation project you have for us, we’re confident our team can help you, since our experts have experience in various types of translation projects. From academic research surveys and interview transcripts to business plans, financial reports, white papers, and website copy, we have you covered. We can even translate creative works like novels, poems, short stories, apps, games, movies, and more to or from Nandi—regardless of the subject matter.
Let our team guide you through the Nandi translation process. Start the journey with your first Nandi translation order today!