Ruund (Ruwund), also known as Northern Lunda or ''Uruund'', is a Bantu language of the

Democratic Republic of the Congo The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), also known as the DR Congo, Congo-Kinshasa, or simply the Congo (the last ambiguously also referring to the neighbouring Republic of the Congo), is a country in Central Africa. By land area, it is t ...

and

Angola Angola, officially the Republic of Angola, is a country on the west-Central Africa, central coast of Southern Africa. It is the second-largest Portuguese-speaking world, Portuguese-speaking (Lusophone) country in both total area and List of c ...

. It is highly unusual among

Bantu languages The Bantu languages (English: , Proto-Bantu language, Proto-Bantu: *bantʊ̀), or Ntu languages are a language family of about 600 languages of Central Africa, Central, Southern Africa, Southern, East Africa, Eastern and Southeast Africa, South ...

for allowing

consonant In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the vocal tract, except for the h sound, which is pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract. Examples are and pronou ...

al codas and for its reduced vowel system, in which short /e/ and /o/ have become and respectively, leaving only 3 short vowels. Another interesting feature of Ruund is that, as with the related Ciluba language, the tones of Proto-Bantu have reversed, so that High has become Low and vice versa.Nash, J.A. (1994)
"Underlying Low Tones in Ruwund"
''Studies in African Linguistics'' Volume 23, Number 3,1992-1994. In this language therefore the accented syllables are Low and the default tone is High.

References

Lunda languages Languages of Angola Languages of the Democratic Republic of the Congo {{Bantu-lang-stub