Kirundi Verb Conjugations

Kirundi is a Bantu language from the Great Lakes region of Africa, spoken by over 10 million people. Like all Bantu languages, it uses agglutinative morphology — verb forms are built by stacking prefixes onto a verb stem.

The basic verb structure is:

Subject Prefix + Tense Marker + Verb Stem + Final Vowel

For example, tu-ra-kor-a (we work) breaks down as: tu- (we) + -ra- (present) + -kor- (work) + -a (indicative).

Key features of the Kirundi verb system:

• Subject prefixes agree with the subject (n-, u-, a-, tu-, mu-, ba- for personal pronouns)
• Tense markers: -ra- (present), -a-...-ye (recent past/perfective), -a-ra-...-ye (remote past), -zo- (future)
• Perfective sound changes — the perfective suffix -ye triggers consonant mutations: -r- → -z-, -t- → -sh-, -k- → -ts-, -nd- → -nz-
• Verb extensions modify meaning: applicative (-ir-), causative (-ish-), reciprocal (-an-), passive (-w-)
• Infinitive prefix: gu-/ku-/kw- depending on the initial sound of the stem