diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..c0745e0d8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/.gitattributes
@@ -0,0 +1,2 @@
+# Include RST files in language statistics on GitHub.
+*.rst linguist-detectable
diff --git a/.gitignore b/.gitignore
index 023db3d17..31b33542b 100644
--- a/.gitignore
+++ b/.gitignore
@@ -1,6 +1,7 @@
 *.pyc
-.*
 *.mo
+.*
+!.gitattributes
 
 # Sphinx build files
 _build/