ndemwa

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Kikuyu

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Etymology

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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

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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)

Noun

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ndemwa class 9/10 (plural ndemwa)

  1. tattoo
  2. letter (of alphabet)
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(Nouns)

(Verbs)

See also

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References

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  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. 58–59. 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.