On the Telephone

• When answering the telephone, after the greeting like “Amakuru,” one can ask:
  Uri nde? – who are you?
  • uri – you are
  • nde – who
    
    
• To which someone might reply:
  nde Cameron – I am Cameron
  
  
• I can then ask “Who do you want to talk to?” in one of several different ways:
  • ukeneye nde? – who do you need?
    • ukeneye – need (from gukenera – to need)
      
      
  • ushaka nde? – who do you want?
    • ushaka – want (from gushaka – to want)
      
      
  • ukeneye kuvugana na nde? – who do you need to talk with?
    • kuvugana – to converse, to talk with (from “kuvuga” meaning “to talk”, plus “na” which means “with” or sometimes “and”)
    • na – with (this is not accidentally repeated: na is both its own word in this sentence, and a modifying particle which changes the verb “to talk” into “to converse”)
      
      
  • If you with to be more formal, you can say:
    mwifuza kuvugana na nde? – who do you wish to talk with?
• mwifuza – “to wish”, technically in 2^nd person plural form (“yinz wish”), but in this case is formal and polite when used to address a single person. The 2^nd person singular form is “wifusa,” which would be understood, but is less formal.This construction is actually pronoun+verb:
• u – 2^nd person singular pronoun
• mu – 2^nd person plural pronoun
• However, because two vowels cannot follow each other in Kirundi, u and mu become w and mw!