kĩĩmbu

Kikuyu

Etymology

Hinde (1904) records kēēmbu as an equivalent of English chameleon in “Jogowini dialect” of Kikuyu, listing also Kamba keembu as its equivalent.[1]

Pronunciation
  • IPA(key): /keè.ᵐbǔ/
As for Tonal Class, Armstrong (1940) classifies this term into mote class which includes mũtĩ, gĩkwa (pl. ikwa), gĩthaka, kĩnya, kĩrũũmi, mũcinga, mũgate, mũhaka, mũrũthi, njagĩ, njohi, nyũmba, etc.[2] Benson (1964) classifies this term into Class 2 with a disyllabic stem, together with kĩgunyũ, njagĩ, kiugũ, and so on.
  • (Kiambu)

Noun

kĩĩmbu class 7 (plural ciĩmbu)

  1. chameleon[4][5]

See also

References
  1. Hinde, Hildegarde (1904). Vocabularies of the Kamba and Kikuyu languages of East Africa, pp. 12–13. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  2. Armstrong, Lilias E. (1940). The Phonetic and Tonal Structure of Kikuyu. Rep. 1967. (Also in 2018 by Routledge).
  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.
  4. “kĩĩmbu” in Benson, T.G. (1964). Kikuyu-English dictionary, p. 199. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
  5. Leakey, L. S. B. (1977). The Southern Kikuyu before 1903, v. I, p. 460. →ISBN
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