Overview of the Kirundi Basic Course

The Kirundi Basic Course is divided into 30 units, many of which are composed of dialogues, notes, and supplemental vocabulary. The course assumes the student has no prior knowledge of Kirundi and is fully self-instructional. This means that while an instructor/native speaker would be helpful, it is not imperative to learn Kirundi with this course. There are 19 CDs and a 500 page textbook or 1 DVD with all lessons on MP3 with the textbook in a PDF file format.

Unit 1: Exchanging greetings and getting acquainted.

Unit 2: Looking for work

Unit 3: Where do people live and work?

Unit 4: Getting help in the language

Unit 5: Arranging for help in language study

Unit 6: Comparing notes about language study

Unit 7: Family relationships

Unit 8:More about family relationships

Unit 9: More about family relationships

Unit 10: Review

Unit 11: Getting street directions

Unit 12: More street directions

Unit 13: Planning a short trip

Unit 14: Buying food

Unit 15: Buying clothing

Unit 16: Buying food at the door

Unit 17: Eating

Unit 18: Work in the kitchen

Unit 19: Restaurant and kitchen

Unit 20: Review

Unit 21: Caring for children

Unit 22: Climate and weather

Unit 23: Seasonal crops

Unit 24: The geography of Burundi

Unit 25: A visit to a friend's home

Unit 26: Car trouble

Unit 27: The government of Burundi

Unit 28: Miscellaneous topics

Unit 29: Short dialogues

Unit 30: Short texts, with questions and answers

Kirundi is the principal language of Burundi. It shares a high degree of mutual intelligibility with Kinyarwanda, the language of Rwanda. Considered together, the cluster Kirundi-Kinyarwanda ranks third among Bantu languages, after Swahili and Lingala, with respect to number of speakers. There are however two important differences bet ween Swahili and Lingala on the one hand and Kirundi-Kinyarwanda on the other: (1) Swahili and Lingala are spoken over very wide areas, and a high proportion of their speakers have some other Bantu language as the mother tongue; Kirundi-Kinyarwanda is spoken in a relatively small area, as the first language. (2) Swahili and Lingala are relatively free of troublesome complexities for the learner; Kirundi and kinyarwanda are full of them. The two books in this series which are concerned with Swahili and Lingala set out the grammar of those languages in the form of a series of individual notes, distributed throughout the units of the course. The present volume presents the details of Kirundi grammar in the same way. In addition, however, this synopsis has been prepared, first of all to provide orientation for those who plan to use the entire book, and secondarily for the student whose desire is to learn as much as possible about the language in the shortest time. Only the most important features of the grammar are mentioned at all, and the vocabulary used in the examples has intentionally been kept small. The exercises, with answers given in square brackets at the right, are not intended to make this synopsis into an auto-instructional program, but only to give the reader an opportunity to participate if he desires to do so, and to keep constant check on his understanding of the text.