Disclaimer: For those who can speak Kinyarwanda and take time to read my blog (a very small population I'm sure) the spelling and correctness of the Kinyarwanda words in this post are not guaranteed. As with all things, I will accept some gentle ridicule but be gentle.
In Kinyarwanda they are very literal in the naming of their days and months. They don't use the traditional Roman roots as we do.
Here are some examples of numbers
1=rimwe
2=kabiri
3=gatatu
4=kane
5=gatanu
...
10 icumi
11-19 is logical, thus 11 is 10 and 1 (icumi na rimwe)
when you get to twenty it gets a little more complicated in that it follows the nomenclature for the teens rather than the 30s and 40s. 20 is makumyabiri. Broken down that is makum ya biri (pretty much means double ten). To say 30 or 40 you use Mirongo itatu and Mirongo ine (sort of means 3 in the tens place and 4 in the tens place)
When you use numbers in a sentence the "prefix" changes. For example. We have four kids so we say tufite (we have) abana (children plural) bane (four). However if you are talking about chairs you say "tufite inhebe (chair) ine (four). The numbers change prefixes with each class of nouns, of which there are 10.
Now you get to days of the week. The week starts on Monday rather than Sunday so:
Monday=Kuwa mbere (literally means first day)
Tuesday=Kuwa kabiri (second day)
and so on.
Months
January=mu kwa mbere (first month)
February=mu kwa kabiri (second month)
Time:
The day starts at 7 am rather than midnight.
7am is Samoya
8 am is Sambiri (second hour)
9 am is Satatu (third hour)
this holds true all the way to 6 pm which is Sacumi nebyiri (12th our) at which time you change back to Samoya (7 o'clock) but add zu mugoroba or literally 7 o'clock in the evening.
So when someone tells me what time they want to meet I have to count up from 7 am on my fingers in order to figure out when I need to arrive and then I have to ask them to repeat it so that I make sure they didn't say mugoroba. I did have a guy show up in the morning to meet me because I did not say mugoroba (at night). Oh well, you live and learn and thrive on the graciousness of others.
Now for that which sent my wife into orbit. We were having a very slow conversation in Kinyarwanda with our teacher and he asked us what our plans were for the coming year. Madelyn's birth day is January 22, 2010. So you say.
Madelyna afite (Madeyln, she has) umunsi mukuru (a special day) mukwa mbere (January) macumyabiri na kabiri (twenty and 2), ibihumbi (thousand plural) bibiri (2) na cumi (and 10). (Madelyn has a birthday (special day) on January twenty second, two thousand ten).
All in all it isn't too bad. It is all perspective. When they learn english I'm certain it is similar frustration. I often hear someone quote me the price of something incorrectly by interchanging one hundred for one thousand. There is pattern and logic to it and that defines the Kinyawanda language. It strives to be somewhat poetic and very logical.
We need prayers for language. We feel we are doing better each day but we need the prayers so that we can give our daily time up to God. We are not capable of organizing our own time each day and if we try we end up giving it to Satan and doing those things which get us nowhere. Only when we give our time to God do we suddenly find ourselves wanting to study and focus on the purpose of our time here: Give the word of God to the people of Rwanda in their own language.
