Learn Kinyarwanda Through Topics You Care About

LingoBear creates short Kinyarwanda passages on topics you choose. Tap any word for an instant English translation and build your vocabulary as you read. Bantu language, sole official language of Rwanda alongside English, French and Swahili, Latin script, 16 noun classes, tonal, ~13M speakers.

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Every word in your Kinyarwanda reading passage is clickable. Get English translations and grammar help — useful for parsing the rich noun-class agreement system.

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Type any topic and LingoBear generates a fresh Kinyarwanda reading passage — from Volcanoes National Park to Kigali tech.

What is Kinyarwanda and how is it related to Kirundi?

Kinyarwanda (Ikinyarwanda) is a Bantu language native to Rwanda and parts of Uganda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, with around 13 million speakers. It is mutually intelligible with Kirundi, the national language of Burundi — together they form the Rwanda-Rundi dialect cluster. Rwanda's constitution makes it one of four official languages alongside English, French and Swahili.

What grammar features does Kinyarwanda have?

Kinyarwanda uses 16 active noun classes (i-, ba-, umu-, aba-, iki-, ibi-...) that trigger agreement throughout the clause. Verb forms are highly agglutinative — a single word can express subject, object, tense, aspect, mood and politeness. The language is tonal, with high and low tones distinguishing words like umugóre 'wife' from umugore 'woman'. LingoBear lets you see these in real text.