Kikuyu

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Etymology

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Borrowed from Swahili paka.[1]

Hinde (1904) records nempaka as an equivalent of English cat in “Jogowini dialect” of Kikuyu, listing also Kamba mbaka and Swahili paka as its equivalents.[2]

Pronunciation

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As for Tonal Class, Benson (1964) classifies this term into Class 3 with a disyllabic stem, together with kĩhaato, mbembe, kiugo, and so on.
  • (Kiambu)

Noun

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mbaka class 9/10 (plural mbaka)

  1. cat

Synonyms

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References

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  1. ^ “mbaka” in Benson, T.G. (1964). Kikuyu-English dictionary, p. 270. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
  2. ^ Hinde, Hildegarde (1904). Vocabularies of the Kamba and Kikuyu languages of East Africa, pp. 12–13. 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, 75–123.