njege

Kikuyu

Etymology

Hinde (1904) records njege as an equivalent of English porcupine in “Jogowini dialect” of Kikuyu.[1]

Pronunciation
  • IPA(key): /ᶮdʑɛːɣɛ/
The first e is pronounced long.[2]
As for Tonal Class, Benson (1964) classifies this term into Class 5 with a disyllabic stem.
  • (Kiambu) Yukawa (1981) classifies the term njeege into a group including kĩohe, rĩĩtwa, gĩcicio, icungwa, igongona,[3] which Yukawa (1985) merged with another group including mũthũ, mũcibi, gĩkabũ (pl. ikabũ), njata, mũthee, ihũa (pl. mahũa), ithanwa, kang'aurũ, mwatũka, ndarathini (“a certain kind of fruit”), Gĩgĩkũyũ, and so on.[4]

Noun

njege class 9/10 (plural njege)

  1. porcupine

(Nouns)

References
  1. Hinde, Hildegarde (1904). Vocabularies of the Kamba and Kikuyu languages of East Africa, pp. 46–47. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  2. “njege” in Benson, T.G. (1964). Kikuyu-English dictionary, p. 332. Oxford: Clarendon 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.
  4. Yukawa, Yasutoshi (1985). "A Second Tentative Tonal Analysis of Kikuyu Nouns." In Journal of Asian and African Studies, No. 29, 190–231.
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