mbũri

Kikuyu

Alternative forms

mburi

Etymology

From Proto-Bantu *mbʊ́dì. Hinde (1904) records mburri as an equivalent of English goat in “Jogowini dialect” of Kikuyu, listing also Kamba mbuii and Swahili mbuzi as its equivalents.^[1]

Pronunciation

IPA^(key): /ᵐbòɾíꜜ/

As for Tonal Class, Armstrong (1940) classifies this term into mbori class which includes ikinya (pl. makinya), itimũ, kĩhaato, maguta, mbembe, mũgeka, mũrata, nyaga, ũhoro, riitho, riũa, rũrĩmĩ, Kamau (“man's name”), etc.^[2] Benson (1964) classifies this term into Class 3 with a disyllabic stem, together with kĩhaato, mbembe, kiugo, and so on. Yukawa (1981) classifies this term into a group including bũrũri (pl. mabũrũri), ikara, ikinya, itimũ, kanitha (pl. makanitha), kiugo, kĩhaato, maguta, mũgeka, mũkonyo, mũrata, mwana, mbembe, nyaga, riitho, riũa, rũrĩmĩ (pl. nĩmĩ), ũhoro (pl. mohoro), and so on.^[3]

Noun

mbũri class 9/10 (plural mbũri)

goat
Hypernyms: mahiũ [4], indo

Hyponyms: (male) harika, thenge

mbũri yakwa ― my goat

mbũri ciakwa ― my goats

rũũru rwa mbũri ― a herd of goats

Derived terms

Proverbs

References

^ Hinde, Hildegarde (1904). Vocabularies of the Kamba and Kikuyu languages of East Africa, pp. 28–29. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
^ Armstrong, Lilias E. (1940). The Phonetic and Tonal Structure of Kikuyu. Rep. 1967. (Also in 2018 by Routledge).
^ 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.
^ Mugu, Muturi Anthony (2014). Antonymy in Gĩkũyũ: a cognitive semantics approach, p. 31.

[hh1904-1] Hinde, Hildegarde (1904). Vocabularies of the Kamba and Kikuyu languages of East Africa, pp. 28–29. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

[lea1940-2] Armstrong, Lilias E. (1940). The Phonetic and Tonal Structure of Kikuyu. Rep. 1967. (Also in 2018 by Routledge).

[yy1981-3] Yukawa, Yasutoshi (1981). "A Tentative Tonal Analysis of Kikuyu Nouns: A Study of Limuru Dialect." In Journal of Asian and African Studies, No. 22, 75–123.

[mam2014-4] Mugu, Muturi Anthony (2014). Antonymy in Gĩkũyũ: a cognitive semantics approach, p. 31.

[1]

[2]

[3]