njohi

Kikuyu

Alternative forms
  • njoohi

Etymology

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

Pronunciation
  • IPA(key): /ᶮdʑɔ̀ːhǐ/
This o is pronounced long.[2]
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, nyũmba, etc.[3] Benson (1964) classifies this term into Class 2 with a disyllabic stem, together with kĩgunyũ, njagĩ, kiugũ, and so on. Yukawa (1981) classifies this term into a group including gĩkwa (pl. ikwa), ithangũ (pl. mathangũ), kiugũ, kĩboko, kĩgunyũ, kĩnya, kĩroboto, kĩrũũmi, mbogo, mũcinga, mũgate, mũhaka, mũrangi, mũrũthi, ndaraca, ndirica, nyũmba, thĩ, and so on.[4]

Noun

njohi class 9/10 (plural njohi)

  1. alcoholic beverage made from sugar-cane or honey[2]; the former is fermented with a thoroughly dried sausage tree fruit[5]
  2. any kind of alcoholic beverage[6]
    kũnyua njohi - to drink beer

Synonyms

Derived terms

(Proverbs)

  • njohi nĩ gacohora

See also
  • kĩrũrũ

References
  1. Hinde, Hildegarde (1904). Vocabularies of the Kamba and Kikuyu languages of East Africa, pp. 6–7. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  2. “njohi” in Benson, T.G. (1964). Kikuyu-English dictionary, p. 334. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
  3. Armstrong, Lilias E. (1940). The Phonetic and Tonal Structure of Kikuyu. Rep. 1967. (Also in 2018 by Routledge).
  4. 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.
  5. Steinkraus, Keith H. (ed.) (1996). Handbook of Indigenous Fermented Foods, 2nd ed., rev. and expanded, pp. 373–374. New York: Marcel Dekker. →ISBN
  6. Njagi, James Kinyua. (2016). "Lexical Borrowing and Semantic Change: A Case of English and Gĩkũyũ Contact", p. 53.
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