Tuesday, December 29, 2009

A short list of English cognates in Chichewa

This post is mostly for (awesome) nerds like Mike who voluntarily spend hours at a time poring over their linguistics texts for fun. It's also for me, since I haven't posted in a long, long time, and I figure if I start with something mundane, it'll take the pressure off for future posts.

A Short, Non-Comprehensive (or is it Incomprehensive?) List of English Cognates in the Chichewa Language:

AMBURERE - Umbrella
APOZI - Apples
BIZINESI - Business
BOKISI - Box
BOTULO - Bottle
BUKHU - Book
BULEDI - Bread
FOLOKO - Fork
FONI - Phone
KAPU - Cup
KASITOMALA - Customer
KATOLIKA - Catholic
KHOFI - Coffee
KIYI - Key
KOLERA - Cholera
MACHESI - Matches
NYUZIPEPALA - Newspaper
PENSULO - Pencil
PULAYIMALE - Primary
PULEZIDENTI - President
SEKONDALE - Secondary
SIKWEYA - Square
SITOLO - Store
SUKULU - School
TCHALITCHI - Church
THARAUZA - Trousers
THEBULO - Table
TIYI - Tea

Homework: Try and guess the original English word for each of the following:

  1. BATIRE
  2. DEMOKALASE
  3. KOMPYUTA
  4. KHANSALA
  5. GALASI
  6. SITHYUWU
Bonus point: identify this cognate from Portuguese:

NSAPATO

...Okay, that's all I've got today.
Posted by John Duffell at 9:33 AM

3 comments:

  1. Paul's guesses:

    Battery
    Democracy
    Computer
    Counselor?
    Glass
    ??? maybe city?

    And for the bonus:
    Zapato (shoe)

    How many points do I get?

    ReplyDelete

  2. Well done! #6 is a bit of a curveball, though: Stew. No joke.

    Points points points...banns banns banns...I got nothin'.

    ReplyDelete

  3. Swahili shares a few of those words. What are the words for taxi and table? In Swahili they are Teksi and Mesa. Oh and the driver of your teksi is the "dereva."

    ReplyDelete

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