ndemwa

Kikuyu

Etymology

From gũtema (to cut (with a knife)).[1]

Hinde (1904) records mdemua as an equivalent of English tattoo in “Jogowini dialect” of Kikuyu.[2]

Pronunciation

  • IPA(key): /ⁿdɛ́moáꜜ/
As for Tonal Class, Benson (1964) classifies this term into Class 7 with a disyllabic stem, together with njata, and so on.
  • (Kiambu)

Noun

ndemwa class 9/10 (plural ndemwa)

  1. tattoo
  2. letter (of alphabet)

(Nouns)

  • mũtemi class 1

(Verbs)

  • gũtemwo

See also

  • (letter): mwandĩko

References

  1. “ndemwa” in Benson, T.G. (1964). Kikuyu-English dictionary, p. 291. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
  2. Hinde, Hildegarde (1904). Vocabularies of the Kamba and Kikuyu languages of East Africa, pp. 5859. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  3. Yukawa, Yasutoshi (1981). "A Tentative Tonal Analysis of Kikuyu Nouns: A Study of Limuru Dialect." In Journal of Asian and African Studies, No. 22, 75123.
This article is issued from Wiktionary. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.