Page 28 - SoMJ Vol 74 - No 1, 2021

18 The Society of Malaŵi Journal

Certain other words are given a plural in Mateke’s dialect, when in standard
Chichewa they are always singular, for example, mitedzá ‘ground-nuts’,
dzinangwá ‘cassava’, mamímba ‘bellies’.
The word for ‘milk’ in Mateke’s dialect is mazíwa (a word which is used in
Tumbuka and other languages extending north into Tanzania, and is believed to
14
have been borrowed from a Cushitic language). The usual word in modern
Chichewa, however, is mkaka, which is used in an area of languages stretching
across Mozambique, Malawi, and Zambia.
15
The word for ‘horse’ is unexpected, since nangúmi in Chichewa actually
means ‘whale’ (cf. Swahili nyangumi). The word is possibly borrowed from
16
Yao. In some Yao initiation ceremonies, a nangumi is an animal-like bamboo
17
structure which boys crawl into on the last day of their circumcision period.
Another unusual word is mwanámanga for ‘cat’, instead of the usual chóna
or mphaká. Mwanámanga is the word for ‘cat’ in the Lomwe language spoken in
southern Malawi.
18
Other anomalous singulars are livu (normally bavu) ‘wasp’, dzíso
19
(normally díso) ‘eye’, lilume (lilime) ‘tongue’, dzurwa or dzuruwa (dzúŵa)
20
‘sun’, gurwa (gúwa) ‘bed’, and mtoyango (mténgo) ‘tree’ (but the regular form
mténgo is given under ‘cotton-tree’ and ‘I cut a tree’). It is possible that the ‘rw’
in dzurwa is Koelle’s attempt to represent the sound /ŵ/.
One of the surprising things about the wordlist is the fact that it contains
numbers for 6, 7, 8, and 9, which are not found in any modern Chichewa
dictionary. The number nthanda ‘six’ may be compared with the Chikumba
21
mtanda, Chisena tandhatu, Xhosa zintandathu, Shona tanhatu, Kinyarwanda
gatandatu, which are a reduplication of the word for three (n)tatu. The word
mwinda ‘nine’ is presumably related to the Luganda mwendâ in the same meaning.

14 Cushitic languages are those typical of the Horn of Africa, such as Oromo (Galla) or
Somali, and also Iraqw (spoken in Tanzania).
15 Ehret, Christopher (1967): Cattle-Keeping and Milking in Eastern and Southern African
History: The Linguistic Evidence. The Journal of African History, 1967, Vol. 8, No. 1, pp.
1-17. Neither word is found in Rebmann’s dictionary.
16 Nangumi is used once in the 1922 Chichewa Bible translation for Leviathan (Isaiah 27:1).
17 This information comes from an informant who himself underwent the ceremony as a
boy. The word nangumi also refers to a clay figure made on the ground as a teaching aid
for initiates.
18 Kalinde, Patrick (2018). Ellomwe–English Vocabulary. SIL Digital Resources. The
formation is typical of Lomwe; cf. mwanakhu ‘chicken’ and mwanapwa ‘dog’. A word for
‘cat’ does not appear in Rebmann’s dictionary.
19 In Rebmann spelled Bapfu (i.e. babvu).
20 In Rebmann spelled Riso (i.e. líso). But ‘tooth’ is Dsino (i.e. dzíno, like Mateke’s dzino).
21 Chikunda or Kunda is a language of Zambia, spoken east of Lusaka, and closely related
to Nyanja.