Swahili Dictionary - a dump of the database

Swahili Dictionary

#dateconst# 9/21/19

ID	Swahili	English	WordType	See Also EN	See Also SW	Description	Example	Comment
0	kuja	come	verb
1	kula	eat	verb			duplicate
2	kulala	sleep	verb
3	kunywa	drink	verb
4	kuli	eat	verb		kuja	duplicate
5	kwenda	go	verb	to like / to love	kupenda	transitive ?		sub-texts of to like, to love, confusing
6	kucheza	play	verb	to dance	mchezo			- also to dance
7	kusoma	read, study	verb	to learn
8	kupiku	cook	verb
9	kutembea	walk	verb
10	kupenda	like, love	verb	to go	kwenda			- also to go
11	kukimbia	run	verb	to walk	kutembea
12	kufika	arrive	verb
13	kuandiki	write	verb
14	kuaji	come back	verb	to return	kurudi			- also to return
15	kurudi	return	verb	to come back	kuaji			not clear on distinction with "kuaji"
16	kufikiri	think	verb
17	kuwamka	wake up	verb
18	kufanya	do	verb
19	kuhitaji	need (something)	verb	to ask for, to beg			ninahitaji - I need
20	kujaribu	try	verb
21	kujibu	answer, reply	verb	to reply
22	kufua	wash	verb		kuosha			clothes (soft things in general?)
23	kusafishi	clean	verb			home		- clean buildings
24	kufagia	sweep	verb			home
25	kuwasha	light	verb					to ignite - fires, stoves
26	kuosha	wash	verb		kufua			bottles, plates, buckets, pots - hard things in general
27	kufuta	wipe, to dust	verb			home		also to erase (computer files)
28	kutanoni	have a meeting	verb					to participate, or to attend
29	kuomba	ask (for)	verb	to beg			ninaomba nyama na nguruwe - I would like some pork ("meat of pig")	to beg for something, being a begger. to ask for food (at table, at a restaurant)
30	nguo	clothes	noun
31	daktiri	doctor (medical)	noun			job
32	ufagio	broom	noun		kufagia	home
33	bafu	bathroom	noun			home
34	moto	fire	noun			home
35	mhudumu	waiter, waitress	noun
36	jiko	kitchen or stove	noun			home		both the room and the implement
37	chumba	room	noun			home
38	sufuria	pot (metal)	noun	bucket	ndoo	home		implication is it is metal, and there is by implication a word for a non-metal pot
39	sabuni	soap	noun					- detergents in general, may be others
40	ndoo	bucket	noun		sufuria	home
41	meza	table	noun			home		sounds like it has ome in from a Romance language
42	kikombe	cup	noun			home		This is a city name, isn't it? Kikombo (district near Dodoma) or Kikomba (a cryptozoological myth).
43	sahani	dishes	noun	crockery	vyombo	home		or is it a place setting, crockery and cutlery
44	dirisha	window	noun			home		where did that come from
45	vyombo	dishes	noun	plates	sahani	home		- what is the difference vyombo vs sahani ? - crockery
46	takataka	trash , garbage	noun			home
47	chupa	bottle	noun			flask, water bottle or the modern poncy form
48	mwanamke	woman	noun	man	mwanaume	family, people		wa- for plural
49	mwanaume	man	noun			family, people
50	baba	father	noun			family, people
51	dada	sister	noun			family, people
52	kaka	brother	noun			family, people
53	mama	mother	noun			family, people
54	mwana	son	noun			family, people
55	binti	daughter	noun			family, people
56	mti	tree	noun	trees, forest	miti, misitu
57	mche	seedling	noun
58	mchezo	game	noun
59	mto	river	noun	fire	moto	places		- also given as "pillow", which is very odd. - compare with moto "fire"
60	muziki	music	noun					obviously imported from English (German?)
61	mfuko	bag, sack, handbag	noun
62	mwalimu	teacher	noun	student	wanafunzi	job
63	mlango	door	noun
64	mji	town	noun	town	mzi	places		- two spellings given, "mji" and "mzi" - "mji mkubwa!, big town == city
65	mzigo	package, luggage	noun
66	mipira	ball(s)	noun					- not clear if singular, plural, or both
67	mkulimu	farmer	noun			job		- check
68	mizizi	root, tuber	noun	potato, carrot	viazi, karoti	food AND part of plant?
69	miavuli	umbrella(s)	noun					- not clear if singular, plural, or both
70	misumari	nails, tacks	noun	fingernails	????			- warning to use for construction, so wonfer about fingernails or other confounder
71	mikuki	spears	noun
72	mkutano	meeting of people	noun	to go to a meeting, rendezvous	kutanoni
73	kuongea	speak	verb
74	kujifunza	to learn	verb
75	misikiti	mosque	noun	chair	kiti	places		- is kiti(chair) <-> misikiti (mosque) coincidence?
76	misitu	forest	noun	tree, trees	mti, miti	places
77	mchuzi	sauce (EN_US, ketchup)	noun			food
78	mpaka	boundary, frontier	noun			places
79	mnyororo	chain	noun
80	mfereji	canal	noun			places		- irrigation, transport, or both?
81	mkeka	mat	noun	pillow	mto	home		- is the connection mto <-> mkeka valid?
82	mkasi	scissors (pair)	noun	knife	kisu
83	mradi	project, task	noun
84	mtumbwi	canoe	noun
85	mchoro	drawing, diagram	noun
86	mtoto	child	noun			family, people
87	mmea	plant	noun			agriculture, not industrial
88	mti	tree	noun	trees	miti			- using m-/mi- to form plural
89	miti	trees	noun	tree	mti	places		mi-/ m- plural/ singular
90	maswali	question	noun	answer	???			- sure that "answer" has come by, as a verb or a noun
91	matunda	fruit	noun			food
92	matibabu	treatment	noun
93	viazi	potato	noun			food
94	wali	rice (cooked)	noun	rice grains ?	mchele	food		- not sure the distinction between "wali" and "mchele" ? q.v. "mche"
95	mchele	rice (uncooked?, growing?)	noun	rice (cooked)	wali	food		- not sure of distinction between "mchele" and "wali"
96	yai	egg	noun	eggs	mayai	food
97	mayai	eggs	noun	egg	yai	food		- prefix of "ma-" to make a plural
98	ndizi	banana	noun			food
99	mkate	bread	noun			food		- different grains?
100	samake	fish	noun			food		- many sub-types?
101	ugali	stiff porridge	noun			food		- it's a quite traditional Tanzanian food, but id basically a starch paste. Bland on blandness.
102	chipsi	chips (EN_US "french" fries)	noun			food
103	karoti	carrot, carrots	noun			food		- singular or plural, or both ?
104	bibi	grandmother	noun	grandfather	babu	family, people
105	babu	grandfather	noun	grandmother	bibi	family, people
106	vitunguu	onions	noun	garlic	saumlu	food
107	vitunguu saumu	garlic	noun	onions	vitunguu	food
108	machungwa	oranges	noun			food
109	nyanya	tomato	noun			food
110	maembe	mangoes	noun			food		- non-native
111	maparachichi	avocados	noun			food
112	pilipili	peppers	noun			food	Piipili hoho - "bell pepper" or green pepper" Pilipili tamu - something else	- several types "hoho", "tamu", so be careful
113	chakula	food	noun	to eat	kula	food		- "cha" and "kula",
114	matunda	fruit	noun			food		- uncountable?
115	jani	????	noun			food????		- no translation, came up in the listings, possibly a fake
116	nguruwe	pig	noun			food, animal		- meats are named as "nyama wa ____", "meat of _animal_" ; nyama wa nguruwe = pig meat, pork
117	mboga	vegetables	noun			food		- meat nyama ; vegetables mboga ; fruits matunda
118	nyama	meat	noun			food		- see note under "nguruwe", pig
119	ng'ombe	cow	noun			food, animal
120	kuku	chicken	noun			food, animal
121	mbuzi	goat	noun			food, animal
122	bia	beer	noun			food
123	kahawa	coffee	noun	tea	chai	food
124	maziwa	milk	noun			food		which milk animals?
125	chai	tea	noun	coffee	kahawa	food
126	maji	water	noun			food
127	jusi	juice	noun			food
128	vinywaji	drinks, beverages	noun			food
129	kiti	chair	noun			home
130	kisu	knife	noun			home
131	kitabi	book	noun			home
132	maharage	beans	noun			food
133	mkubwa	large, big, huge	adjective	small	mdogo	adverb
134	safi	clean	adjective			adverb
135	langu	my	adjective			possessive		the prefixes include l-, m-, w-, y- under rules TBA
136	yako	your	adjective		yenu	possessive		singular or plural "you"? Prefixes and suffixes,
137	wake	her/ his / its	adjective			possessive		Prefixes and suffixes. w-, y- ...
138	yao	their	adjective	our	wetu	possessive		Prefixes and suffixes
139	wetu	our	adjective	their	yao	possessive		Prefixes and suffixes, w-, y- etu
140	mbaya	bad	adjective	good	mzuri	adverb
141	mrefu	tall, long	adjective	short
142	wa	of (the)	adjective			possessive		Range of prefixes and suffixes
143	wachache	few	adjective	many		adverb
144	mdogo	small	adjective	big	mkubwa	adverb
145	mzuri	good	adjective	bad	mbaya	adverb
146	kila	each, every	adjective			adverb
147	tafadhali	please	adverb			other
148	wewe	you	noun			pronoun
149	sisi	we	noun			pronoun
150	asubuhi	morning	noun	day, evening	siku, usiku	time
151	jioni	evening	noun	morning, afternoon	asubuhi, alasiri	time
152	siku	day	noun	night, morning	usiku, asubuhi	time
153	usiku	night	noun	morning, evening	asubuhi, jioni	time
154	leo	today	noun	tomorrow, yesterday	kesho, jana	time
155	mchana	afternoon	noun	afternoon, morning	alasiri, asubuhi	time
156	kesho	tomorrow	noun	today, yesterday	leo, jana	time
157	alasiri	afternoon	noun	morning, evening	asubuhi, jioni	time
158	jana	yesterday	noun	today, tomorrow	leo, kesho	time		need to draw a time-line
159	ninyi	you (plural)	noun	you (singular)	wewe	pronoun		are (wewe/ ninyi) really (plural/ singular)?
160	mgeni	guest	noun
161	kwa	for	preposition
162	na	and	conjunction
163	je	will	unsure					isthis a noun, or a verb, or a tense-indicator
164	au	or	conjunction
165	tena	again	adverb
166	vyakula	food	noun	food	chakula
167	mzazi	parent	noun	parents	wazazi	relationships		typical "M/Wa" singuar/plural construction.
168	wao	they	noun			pronoun		often seems to be superfluous - but why?
169	kushauri	counselling, advising	verb			transitive		came from reading, no worked context
170	matanguzo	spots	adjective	stripes	kupigwa	adjective	Gets cnfused with spotting and reporting an advert.	in reference to spotty zebra
171	punda	zebra	noun	zebra	mbwa			als0 gets confused.

#pageconst# 1/13

German Notes 01

 I make sporadic notes into a dead tree, and intermittently write them up here.

Script and Alphabet

British 26 plus ß ("eszett" or "Schafer's S" ; deprecated since ~1980s review of orthography). 

Vowels are pronounced long if followed by a single consonant, or "h" but long if followed by two consonants or doubled. THAT MAKES NO SENSE, go back and check!

O, U, and A can take umlauts (e-umlaut and i-umlaut are for spoofs and rock bands).

Prounciation

Pile of tables and English equivalents.

Word order

The "verb on the 3rd page problem" :

[Pronoun clause] [Verb+conjugation] [object noun clause] ge-/ geg- [verb root]

Genders

Three genders - masculine, feminine, neuter.

Articles

Setting             ENGLISH   DE(m)  DE(f)    DE(n)
Indefinite article  a         ein    eine     einen
Definite article    the       der    die      das
Dative Indef        ???                          ?
Dative Def                   ?
...

Verb Conjugation

Several types of regular verb - I need to fill the table, then do the regulars
ab
Setting             ENGLISH   DE(m)  DE(f)    DE(n)
1st person singular I         Ich    Ich      Ich
2nd person singular You       ?      ?        ?
3rd person singular He/She/It Er     Sie      ?
1st person plural   We        Wir
2nd person plural   You       Du
3rd person plural   They/ One


?

cd
ef

Noun List

See "genders above to get gender from article.

Der Strom  = river  =  electricity

Swahili Notes 01

Swahili Notes

I've done a number of jobs in East Africa, Tanzania in particular, so I figure that learning at least a little Swahili is appropriate. I'm only doing about 20 minutes a day, but here are what I've picked up so far. Fortunately, Swahili uses the Latin character set.

Table of Contents

Swahili Notes -1

Language type -1

Verbs -1

Present.Simple (I do _____ etc) -2

Present.Negator (I do not ____ etc) -2

Present.Possession (I have [noun phrase] etc) -2

Present.Possession.Negator (I do not have [noun phrase] etc) -2

Future.Simple (I will do ____ etc) -2

Nouns -3

Singular versus Plural -3

Questioning -3

Repetition -3

Word Order – Possessive pronouns -3

Adverbs -4

Language type

Swahili is a language constructed as a “trade language” or Lingua Franca for the region, from some previous languages and the language of coastal (slave-taking) traders from Arabia.

There is a clarity and simplicity to the grammar as I’m uncovering it, which may be related to this origin.

Loan words are being imported currently, and may have been for a long time.

Verbs

Seem (so far – I’m very much a beginner at this) to be very consistent. Most conjugations seem to be a pronoun/prefix and a verb-root (generally the verb’s infinitive, less a leading “ku-”, but there are exceptions). There are a lot of loan-words from Western languages, and probably other loan words I don’t recognise.

Present.Simple (I do _____ etc)

Person	Singular	Plural
1st	Nina______	Tuna________
2nd	Una_______	Mna________
3rd	Ana_______	Wana_______

Present.Negator (I do not ____ etc)

Person	Singular	Plural
1st	Si______	Hatu________
2nd	Hu_______	Ham________
3rd	Ha_______	Hawa_______

Present.Possession (I have [noun phrase] etc)

Person	Singular	Plural
1st	Nina [NP]	Tuna [NP]
2nd	Una [NP]	(?Mna) [NP]
3rd	Ana [NP]	Wana [NP]

Present.Possession.Negator (I do not have [noun phrase] etc)

Person	Singular	Plural
1st	Sina	Hatuna
2nd	Huna	???
3rd	Hana	Hawana

Future.Simple (I will do ____ etc)

Person	Singular	Plural
1st	Nita ____	____
2nd	____	____
3rd	____	____

Nouns

Several “families” - the M/Wa (which describes the singular/ plural prefixes), the K/Ki …

Articles

Like Russian and the other (?) Slavonic languages, Swahili doesn't use articles ("the", "a" etc.) ; if you're trying to translate from Swahili you need to work out where to put them from context.

Singular versus Plural

Mna / Una
- Mna is a singular “you” ; una” is a “plural you”. In southern EN_US, this is the “you-all” or “y’all” construction. Is that unusual or inherited somehow? FR has a “tu/ vous” distinction which mixes plurality and seniority. DE has “du/ Sie”.
Other pluralising constructions?
Lots of loan words.

Pronouns

I may have inherited the m/f/n split from German

Plurality	Singular		Multiple
1st person	I	Mimi	We	Sisi
2nd person	You		You	Wewe
3m person	He		They
3f person	She		They
3n person	It		They

Questioning

[Pronoun][infinitive], so unakunywa is [una][kunywa] "are you (sing.) drinking"

Repetition

_________ tena = [do] _________ again

Word Order – Possessive pronouns

Noun [possessive pronoun] e.g. wanafunzi [wangu] = the students [of mine]
Noun [of] possessor e.g. mlango wa mwalimu = the door of the teacher.
I’m trying to figure out which endings dictate which prefixes.
Suffices (from plurality/ gender) seem related to the prefix of the possessive pronoun

Known prefixes	Possessive pronoun root	English equivalent	Comment (count of prefixes, other)
l-, -m-, y-, w-	-angu	my	4,
	yako	his	1, sometimes -u
w,	-ake	her	0, lost
w-, y-	-ake	it’s	2, sometimes -o
	yao	their	0, other uses too?
w-,,y-	-etu	Our	2,
	wa ya	of the	varies for M/WA nouns, - maybe for K/KW too

Trying to work out which ending to use is giving me a headache.

Suffix on previous word	possessive prefix
-cho, -ea, -wi,	wa- w-
-a, -ji, -ti,	y-
-ma	na- ya-

Word Order

I'm still trying to work this out.
Jina lako   ni     nani      baba
Name your / is   / what    / Grandad
Object    / verb / subject / modifier






Cleaning – hard versus soft?

Adverbs

Little used so far.

Dictionary

Updated as SwahiliDict.2019-09-21.pdf

Aidan’s Swahili Notes Page 6 of 6 total.

GeoMapApp - freeware GIS system linked to geological datasets pasted from main blog

GeoMapApp (www.geomapapp.net) is a Java tool (read : runs on any powerful-enough system) for interrogating various publicly available geological and geophysical data sets as well as your own data sets, then displaying the data together.
My current task - I wish to plot seabed terrain between West Africa and North Brazil, to show the potential for a "chain-of-beads" linkage for not-fully marine whales to cross the proto-Atlantic.
But now I'm tired.

The Brazilian archipelago has a lighthouse and research station at 0°55'00.4"N / 29°20'45.1"W ( 0.916764 / -29.345849 ) surrounded by 5 islets comprising nearly 12000 sq.m of exposed land. That is equivalent to about 120 m in diameter, and unsurprisingly, the 250m typical resolution of the bathymetry and coastlines global datasets don't show it.

That explains why I can't manually position a profile line across the islands. Which is unfortunate. Since multiple-leg profiles are not supported, I'll have to resort to a little subterfuge. Two approaches suggest themselves - manually calculating two end-points that pass over my desired point and looking at that, or constructing a profile from one point to my location then a second profile from my location to another point. The second method would allow construction of "dog-leg" profiles.


OK, now I've forgotten how to do images on the blog, and I've just trashed the last edit.

More JS permissions needed.

Now, having set up the profiles with identical horizontal and vertical scales, I could bodge those profiles together, end to end, to make a single profile, and edit the maps to show it properly on one. Do-able, but a lot of fankle. Alternatively, I can try to work out how to make a GIS "shapefile" (which is opening up a whole can of GIS worms itself) to produce the map plot, and export the two profiles as data files, merge them in a spreadsheet, and do the plot from the spreadsheet (I can also manually correct the StPeter-StPaul rocks elevation to match the 18m of record. It's below the resolution of the dataset.) That's a lot of work for a whim.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Peter_and_Saint_Paul_Archipelago
00°55′1″N 29°20′45″W

Decoding a hallmark

A hallmark is a set of marks made on a piece of precious metal to indicate it's quality, as verified by a particular assay office.
The hallmark normally contains - an indication of the controlling assay office (a national body, or a local one for a city or region) - the type and quality of the metal - the manufacturer - and frequently an indication of the date of manufacture. Naturally this information is of great interest to the  dealer in antiques and jewellery. Naturally therefore they are also prone to being forged. For a long time then, the stamps used to make these marks were very fine pieces of the metalworker's art, to discourage copying by unauthorised people. Again, this makes them a target for forgery.

I have been examining a ring which I brought from a jewllers as Oksana's engagement ring. I got the size drastically wrong - it was the first ring I ever brought - and it has long needed to be rebuilt to fit her much smaller fingers. And in the process, I've been examining the hallmarks.

Well, I can get something out of that :
- the 4th character is a 5-petaled Yorkshire rose - which is the symbol for the Sheffield assay office.
- the boxed "375" is the gold count in parts per thousand. 375/1000  is 3 parts in 8, or 9-carat.

The rest of the symbols - I need to take a closer photo (and the ring is currently at the jewellers), or get the sketchbook and loupe out.