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.
