A Kinyarwanda lesson: pe! and se?

Like English, Kinyarwanda speakers will often put emotion into their exclamations. When they ask questions, the end of the sentence is inflected upwards, as in English.

Normally. But there’s also pe (Pay), which is added to a sentence for emphasis and exclamation. Sometimes you can’t hear the exclamation in the speaker’s inflection; they make their point by using pe. Similarly, se (Say) can be used to signify a question without the upward inflection at the end of the sentence. Both are optional additions to sentences.