Danish to Rundi: people at the beginning and location at the end
Changing a Danish subject can change the Rundi verb prefix
Danish can change han or hun to de while the corresponding present verb keeps its form. In Cox’s Rundi course, arakora describes one person working and barakora describes several working. The change at the beginning of the target verb carries participant information. A Danish report about a worker followed by a report about the whole team therefore needs more than a substituted separate pronoun.
The course’s umuhungu and abahungu distinguish a boy or son from boys or sons. In a family message, preserve both the noun’s number and the agreement associated with it. The Danish plural ending and the Rundi initial material are different mechanisms. Seeing a familiar root inside the target is not enough to establish whether the message concerns one child or several.
There can be attached to the verb
A corpus study by Devos, Misago and Bostoen documents Rundi locative enclitics attached to verbs. Its Baravahó, barageenda example describes leaving there and going. For Danish input containing der in a place-referring sense, a target verb can consequently contain the location reference without displaying a separate word in the expected source position.
The study distinguishes reference to an explicitly mentioned location from a locative interpretation supplied by context. It also identifies uses that are no longer straightforward references to a place. Do not translate every ending in this family back into Danish der and assume that explains the target sentence. Determine the construction’s actual function: an event’s location, a contextual connection to a place, or a grammaticalized meaning.
This matters when a Danish update refers back to an earlier destination without naming it again. Read that antecedent before deciding whether the Rundi ending preserves it. Conversely, if Danish der introduces an occurrence rather than points to a particular place, a location-like target ending is not automatically required. The same short source word can perform different work.
Er is not one universal linking expression
Cox introduces ni for positive identification or state and si for its negative counterpart, with restrictions on location and dependent clauses in the taught pattern. A Danish sentence describing what someone is cannot be handled identically to one saying where that person is. Identify whether the predicate is a role, a description or a location before selecting the target construction.
A negated report needs its own clause boundary
Danish subordinate-clause structure helps establish what is being asserted. The Language Council contrasts han skulle ikke with at han ikke skulle to show the negative’s position relative to subject and verb. In a Danish account of where someone said they were, identify the reporting clause and the reported location separately. Otherwise the Rundi text can deny someone’s presence at a place when the source instead denies having made the report.
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