mbeca
Kikuyu
Alternative forms
- mbeeca
Etymology
Hinde (1904) records mbesha as an equivalent of English money in “Jogowini dialect” of Kikuyu.[1]
Pronunciation
- IPA(key): /ᵐbɛ̀ːɕàꜜ/
- This e is pronounced long.[2]
- As for Tonal Class, Benson (1964) classifies this term into Class 1 with a disyllabic stem, together with ndaka, and so on.
- (Kiambu)
- (Limuru) As for Tonal Class, Yukawa (1981) classifies this term into a group including cindano, huko, iburi, igego, igoti, ini (pl. mani), inooro, irigũ, irũa, iturubarĩ (pl. maturubarĩ), kĩbaata, kĩmũrĩ, kũgũrũ, mũciĩ, mũgeni, mũgũrũki, mũmbirarũ, mũndũ, mũri, mũthuuri, mwaki (“fire”), mwario (“way of speaking”), mbogoro, nda, ndaka, ndigiri, ngo, njagathi, njogu, nyondo (“breast(s)”), and so on.[3]
Noun
mbeca class 10
- money
Related terms
(Nouns)
- rũbeca class 11
References
- Hinde, Hildegarde (1904). Vocabularies of the Kamba and Kikuyu languages of East Africa, pp. 40–41. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
- “rũbeca” in Benson, T.G. (1964). Kikuyu-English dictionary, p. 27. Oxford: Clarendon 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.