mũthee
Kikuyu edit
Etymology edit
Borrowed from Swahili mzee.[1]
Pronunciation edit
- As for Tonal Class, Benson (1964) classifies this term into Class 7 with a disyllabic stem, together with njata, and so on.
- (Kiambu) Yukawa (1981, 1985) classifies this term into groups, both of which include mũthũ, mũcibi, gĩkabũ (pl. ikabũ), njata, ihũa (pl. mahũa), ithanwa, kang'aurũ, mwatũka, ndarathini (“a certain kind of fruit”), Gĩgĩkũyũ, etc. in common.[2][3]
Noun edit
mũthee class 1 (plural athee)
- old man[1][4]
- honorific used for males older than a speaker and also for speaker's father especially in absent[4]
See also edit
- (old man): mũthuuri
References edit
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 “mũthee” in Benson, T.G. (1964). Kikuyu-English dictionary, p. 499. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
- ^ Yukawa, Yasutoshi (1981). "A Tentative Tonal Analysis of Kikuyu Nouns: A Study of Limuru Dialect." In Journal of Asian and African Studies, No. 22, 75–123.
- ^ Yukawa, Yasutoshi (1985). "A Second Tentative Tonal Analysis of Kikuyu Nouns." In Journal of Asian and African Studies, No. 29, 190–231.
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 Zipporah Njeri Maina (2014) Forms and Functions of Borrowed Honorifics among Gikuyu Speakers of Nairobi County[1], Kenyatta University, page 32