# Kirundi/Bantu(?): Yébabawé!



## Anemona61

Hi everyone!
I'm translating the novel _Petit Pays_ by G. Faye from French into Serbian and I bumped into the exclamation _Yébabawé _with no explanation/translation. It is an autobiographical novel about Faye's life in Burundi. I can only suppose that it is in Swahili. 
I also suppose that it means  something like "Oh, Lord!", "Good Lord!" or "Good heavens!", but I can't find confirmation for that.
I would really appreciate it if you could help me with this.
Thanks in advance.


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## Hercules Grytpype-Thynne

I don't think it's Swahili.  It's probably Kirundi, the native Bantu language of Burundi.  I was able to find the word in the closely related Kinyarwanda language of Rwanda, which according to Wikipedia is mutually intelligible with Kirundi.  This set of Kinyarwanda flash cards translates it as "Oh wow! OMG!"


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## Anemona61

Hercules Grytpype-Thynne said:


> I don't think it's Swahili.  It's probably Kirundi


I thought it was Swahili as I found it in some songs in Swahili (or I was misled to think it was Swahili), but I was obviously wrong!
Thank you so much for your explanation!


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## entangledbank

Swahili doesn't use any accented letters. It only has five simple vowels _a e i o u_, and doesn't have tones, so anything with accents is some other Bantu language.


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## Anemona61

entangledbank said:


> Swahili doesn't use any accented letters.


Thanks for this correction/explanation. I only copied the word from my French text and those accented letters were meant to help  French readers to pronounce it correctly . It was so stupid of me!


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## entangledbank

Well, I meant that other Bantu languages often have more complex vowel systems, so _e_ and _é_ could be different vowels. Also, most of them are tonal, so could use _é_ for high tone and _è_ for low tone. It would depend on the language, but Swahili has none of this.


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## mfctto

Hi there!  I am also translating the same book, but to Portuguese (Brazil) and I ended up in this page when searching the translationm which I knew was in kirundi, since the boy said the grandma and the uncle spoke in this language and they could not understand a word.  Thanks for the explanation.
However, Don't you believe that the meaning of  "Au nom de Dieu" can be "Oh, shit!"?
My best,


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