ngui
Huli
Numeral
ngui
- 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
Huli is the only known language with a pentadecimal (base-15) numeral system.
Further reading
- 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))
- Huli chart the movement of the moon (ega) in two blocks of fifteen days. The standardised depiction is given as follows:
Kikuyu
Etymology
Hinde (1904) records kui and ngiti as equivalents of English dog in “Jogowini dialect” of Kikuyu.[1]
Pronunciation
- IPA(key): /ᵑɡú.íꜜ/
- 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)
References
- Hinde, Hildegarde (1904). Vocabularies of the Kamba and Kikuyu languages of East Africa, pp. 18–19. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
- 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.
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