A LEARNER'S SYNOPSIS OF KIRUNDI STRUCTURE:
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 between 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.
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