Swahili-English dictionary PDF
Preview Swahili-English dictionary
^>:b im m Km- m ;^»<t';->V^3H & G. Michael Yvonne Romney DIXON Collection Of Africana BrighamYoung University Library i-1u h^ l^ / / Swahili-English dictionary BY a C MADAN, A. M.A. STUDENT OFCHRIST CHURCH, OXFORD OXFORD AT THE CLARENDON PRESS 1903 HENRY FROWDE, M.A. PUBLISHER TO THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD LONDON, EDINBURGH NEW YORK HAROLD B. LEE L!BRAR> PROVO, UTAH PREFACE This Dictionary is an attempt to bring together in a con- venient form materials for the study of the language most widely known throughout East and Central Africa, and to combine them in the light of a long, though in various ways limited, experience. It would be more accurately described as an annotated vocabulary of the dialect of Swahili commonly spoken in Zanzibar city. It cannot lay claim to the formal completeness, especially in the treatment of verbs, which attaches to the idea of a dictionary, and it deals with a dialect which in respect of a large number of words is distinguished by the Swahilis themselves from the Swahili dialect of the coast. It is based on the lists of words, singularly accurate and relatively com- plete in themselves, furnished by Bishop Steere's Handbook of Swahili and scattered throughout his collections and trans- — lations, and on Krapfs Diclionary of Swahili works issued more than twenty years ago. Later sources have also been drawn upon, especially Pere Sacleux's Didionnaire frangais- swahiliy 1891, and the ever-increasing volume of Swahili litera- ture (chiefly documents, letters, stories and poetry) due to the industry and scientific enthusiasm of German colonists and scholars. No work, however, at present exists (1903) which attempts the same object as the present. It was beyond the scope of Bishop Steere's plan to supply more than full lists of useful words. As to Krapfs monumental work, it may be enough to express a hope that it will never be re-edited. It remains indispensable to every student of Swahili, and has the a 2 PREFACE iv permanent value and charm of genuine philological pioneer work by an honest and able researcher. It deals almost entirely with the dialect of Swahili used at Mombasa, and revision might make it more practically useful by the removal of inaccuracies and repetitions, and by modifying the spelling and arrange- ment, but such treatment would be analogous to re-writing Schliemann's Troy or Livingstone's Journals. The many first- hand explanations and examples are too precious, however, to be left unused, and it is especially on these that the present Editor has ventured freely to draw. As to the use made of these and other materials, this Dictionary makes no claim to be encyclopaedic, or to include more than the commoner technical terms of arts, crafts and commerce, or to represent fully the flora or fauna of Zanzibar. Like other dictionaries, it presupposes an elementary acquaint- ance with the grammar of the dialect dealt with, in this case a very simple one. But (apart from imperfections due to ignorance or oversight) it will probably be found to provide sufiiciently for the ordinary wants of officials, missionaries, travellers, teachers and translators, especially when used in connexion with the English'Swahili Dictionary (also published by the Oxford University Press, second edition, 1901) by the same Editor. Reasons for attempting to provide a Dictionary of this kind may be briefly stated. The common language of Zanzibar has hitherto been the best known and most widely useful form of Swahili. And Swahili is still by far the most im- portant member of the Bantu family of language, i. e. of the solid block of dialects, closely related among themselves and clearly differentiated from all others, which are spoken through- out about a third of the African continent, i. e. over nearly the whole of it from Nigeria and the Soudan on the north to the Hottentot region on the extreme south. Hence Swahili has been ranked not unreasonably among the twelve most important PREFACE V languages of the modern world, and the position of Zanzibar as till lately the undisputed commercial capital and chief political power of Eastern and Central Africa has determined the form of Swahili still most useful as the key to that entire region. It is not necessary to enlarge on its characteristics, but one special feature of it may be more fully referred to here. The term Swahili represents, ethnologically as well as lin- guistically, the mixture of African and Arab elements on the East Coast of Africa. The proportions of the mixture in the race and the language vary indefinably, but its main character- istic is constant, viz. that the language remains always African, — — and by African in this connexion is meant Bantu in all its leading grammatical and phonetic features^ however largely Arabic, and in a small degree other foreign elements figure in How its vocabulary. largely they figure appears in this book. The Editor is not well acquainted with Arabic, Hindustani, or indeed other dialects of Bantu, but he has made an attempt to discriminate between the Bantu and foreign element throughout. All words believed to be of non-Bantu origin are marked with an asterisk (*). Such words are mostly Arabic, or introduced through Arabic channels, and an Arabic scholar could no doubt add considerably to the number. As it is, a glance will show A the numerical importance of the foreign element. close study is needed to realize its full significance, to detect it (often strangely disguised) in all stages of phonetic and even gram- matical assimilation, and to recognize its subtle power of permea- tion, even to the absolute displacement ofsome of the commonest Bantu words, and almost a monopoly of the connectives of words and sentences except in the simplest relations, and to unfold its historical significance as a record of successive invasions of Arab influence, warlike and peaceful, to which the East coast has been for centuries subjected. Here two or three results may be noted briefly. The Arabic element is so large and pene- trating as seriously to diminish the value of the Swahili dialect PREFACE Vi for the purposes of comparison with other dialects of Bantu, simply from the displacement of Bantu roots elsewhere general. On the other hand, the very opportunity and power of assimila- tion is and has proved to be a most valuable one. It enables the African to draw on the rich resources ofthe Arabic vocabu- lary for the expression or better expression of new ideas, while providing an easy, and as it were, natural channel for the ger- minant seeds of culture, taste, and enlightenment of all kinds, wherever Swahili penetrates throughout the continent. There is a third consideration of practical importance. Bantu, and especially Swahili, is easy to pronounce and even to represent in writing with the ordinary alphabet, and the tendency of Swahili is to make Arabic also easy to pronounce and even (in a degree) to spell. As to the always difficult subject of spelling and transcription of a language only lately reduced to writing, the present Editor is content to adopt generally the remarks made by Bishop Steere (in his Handbook, at the end of the Introduction and in the chapter on the alphabet), corroborated as they are in principle Max by Professor Miiller in his little-known Introduction to the Outline Dictionary for Students of Language by John Bellows (now long out of print). He would also avow his own tendency to Bantize rather than Arabize, i. e. to simplify rather than refine upon Arabic sounds uncongenial to the African, so far as their representation in writing is concerned. There seems no ground for deliberately contributing to their perpetua- tion. The principle just referred to is, that it is a practical necessity in the transcription of languages to indicate sounds, not depict them, and that for this purpose the ordinary English alphabet should be used with as few modifications as possible. Happily in Swahili there are no sounds commonly heard which are not sufficiently indicated by Roman characters. The only real difficulty is one inherent in all phonetic transliteration, viz. actual or supposed differences in the pronunciation of the
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