ngui

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See also: nguí and ngửi

Huli

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Numeral

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ngui

  1. fifteen
    ngui ki : 15*2 i.e. 30
    ngui tebo : 15*3 i.e. 45
    ngui ngui : 15*15 i.e. 225
    nguini angi : on the fifteenth day

Usage notes

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Huli is the only known language with a pentadecimal (base-15) numeral system.

Further reading

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  • Nicholas J. Goetzfridt, Pacific Ethnomathematics: A Bibliographic Study (2008, →ISBN), page 129
  • Laurence Goldman, Child's play: myth, mimesis and make-believe (1998, →ISBN), page 59:
    Huli chart the movement of the moon (ega) in two blocks of fifteen days. The standardised depiction is given as follows:
    Hombene angi hontbene ibule
    On the twelfth day it will come out on top
    halene angi hale howa hama ibule
    on the thirteenth day it will come silently listening
    dene angi de howa yalu ibule
    on the fourteenth day having opened its eyes, the moon will come
    nguini angi ngui higi bu yalu ibule
    on the fifteenth day with squinted nose it will come
    (on days 16-24 the moon is 'on top of the hill' (dindi hombene))

Kikuyu

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Etymology

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Hinde (1904) records kui and ngiti as equivalents of English dog in “Jogowini dialect” of Kikuyu.[1]

Pronunciation

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

Noun

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ngui class 9/10 (plural ngui)

  1. dog
    Synonym: ngitĩ

See also

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References

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  1. ^ Hinde, Hildegarde (1904). Vocabularies of the Kamba and Kikuyu languages of East Africa, pp. 18–19. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  2. ^ 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.
  • “ngui” in Benson, T.G. (1964). Kikuyu-English dictionary, p. 313. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
  • Muiru, David N. (2007). Wĩrute Gĩgĩkũyũ: Marĩtwa ma Gĩgĩkũyũ Mataũrĩtwo Na Gĩthũngũ, p. 10.

Mizo

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Adjective

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ngui

  1. sad, depressed, blue