Reference > Using the dictionary

Using the dictionary

This dictionary is designed to be simple to use. You can search for an English word or a Kinyarwanda word. As you type a word into the search box it will show a list of suggestions.

Results

Each entry in the dictionary looks something like this:

  1. Prefix: the prefix part of the entry. For nouns this will be the singular form prefix (assuming there is one) and for verbs it will be the infinitive form prefix.
  2. Stem: the stem part of the entry.
  3. Modifier: for nouns this is the plural prefix, and for verbs this is the past tense stem ending.
  4. Pronunciation: shows how the word should be pronounced using the amasaku.
  5. Audio button: some words have an audio recording which can be played by clicking this.
  6. Word class: the abbreviated form of the word class. The statistics page gives a list of all the word classes used in the dictionary.
  7. Noun classes: this is the class of the noun in it's singular and plural forms. For other word classes this may be the class of noun which it agrees with.
  8. Variant spellings: other accepted spellings of this word.
  9. English meanings: the English words with equivalent meaning
  10. Root word: the word that this word is derived from.

Advanced searching

You can use * character as a wildcard to search for part of a word. For example: searching for ikinya* will return all entries that begin with "ikinya", and searching for *gura will return all entries that end with "gura"

You can also use parameters to refine your searches. For example wclass:n has:audio will return only nouns that have audio. For a complete list of parameters see here.