Ways to Say Farewell and Good Morning, More on Prepositions, More Questions/Answers About Work, and An Interrupted Lesson on Verbs and Conjugations

Ways to say farewell:

• Turasubira – see you later
• (Ugire) akazi keza – have a good day at work (“ugire” is the imperative form of “have,” “akazi” means “work,” and “keza” means “good or beautiful”)
• Ugire umusi mwise – have a nice day (singular)
• Mugire umusi mwise -- have a nice day (plural)
• Umusi mwise – have a nice day (general, singular or plural)
• Umugoroba mwise – have a nice evening
• Ijoro ryisa – have a good night

Ways to say Good Morning:

• Mwaramutse? – (“mga-ra-mu-tse”) a morning greeting, derived from the verb "guca" meaning “to pass through the night” or “to be able to wake up in the morning”
  • If used casually, and expect a positive reply, can say: 
    Mwaramutse nesa? – literally something like “did you wake up well?” but means “good morning (“nesa” means “good”)
  • If you don’t expect a positive reply, that the person might not have slept well or been able to get up easily, you can say:
    Mwaramutse gute? – literally “how did you sleep?” or “how was getting up?” but can mean “how are you holding up?” or “how are you feeling?” (“gute” means “how”)
  • One can reply with “mwaramutse” or “mwaramutse nesa”

More on Prepositions:

• When saying “I live in Pittsburgh,” it would be appropriate to say “mba Pittsburgh”, where mba is a version of the verb kuba meaning “to reside.” Thus one is literally saying “I live Pittsburgh,” without a preposition.
• However, this is technically grammatically incorrect, and done because of the difficulty of finding the appropriate form of the preposition for non-Kirundi place names.
• In Burundi, one would use various forms of the preposition “i” meaning “in.”
• For example, using two Burundian provinces:
  • Mba i Bujumbura – I live in Bujumbura
  • Mba mu Kayanza – I live in Kayanza
• However, the form muri, which has the connotation of “inside”, can be used with any place name, and is more grammatically correct (even if usually left unspoken):
  • Mba muri Bloomfield – I live in Bloomfield
• The preposition kuri means “on a big thing,” and can be used to describe situations like workplace, for example:
  • ukora kuri airport – I work at (on) the airport

More questions/answers about work:

• ukora hehe? – where do you work? (“ukora” meaning “work” and “hehe” meaning “where”)
  • ukora muri Downtown – I work Downtown
• ukora iki? – what work do you do? (“iki” meaning “what”)
  • ndegisha – I teach (“n” indicates “I”, “I-form” of the verb)
  • nde umwigisha or shortened: ndumwigisha – I am a teacher (“nde” meaning “I am”)

Verbs and Conjugations:

(this lesson was interrupted...)

• Virtually all Kirundi verbs, in their Infinitive forms, start with “ku” or “gu” and end with “a.” For example:
  • kuza – to come
  • kuba – to reside
• One verb, all conjugations: to come
  • infinitive, to come -- kuza
  • present, I come – ndaje