There are some things that brilliant folks out there need to be working on. Here is a list sort of,

1. Gikuyu, key board. All that is needed is to add those two vowels to the regular keyboard.

2. Gikuyu cell phone, sort of like number above.

3. Gikuyu - Gikuyu dictionary. The dictionaries that I have come across have been extremely thin. I know our language has more words than that. This is a project that needs to be embarked on. I remember someone wanted to do it on this very boards but I couldn't find the post.

4. Film. Seriously Africans are sleeping. There are a ton of stories to tell about our people. We can start right off from Gikuyu and Mumbi, pass through Cege wa Kibiru, Kimathi, Jomo up to contemporary life. Our ancestors were very gifted story tellers and since that art died out we need to bring it back and up to date. Seriously, when you break it down that's all what Hollywood is about and they make tons of money. The sad thing is if you don't do it, someone will do it, just like they stole the kiondo and copyrighted it.

quote:

Originally posted by Johnnyk2:
2. Gikuyu cell phone, sort of like number above.

I believe it was not meant for kikuyu language/tribe but coincidentally nokia has got the two vowels.

Waweru, that's pretty interesting stuff. What nokia make is it? Also this is beside the point but does anyone know why the missionaries decided not to use the letter 'f' in the Gikuyu alphabet and use 'b' instead? Words like Baba, Bata, etc. Shouldn't they be written a fafa, fata etc?

I guess it was to make the language simple. There is no 'ba' sound like you find in Kiswahili, therefore, it was easier to maintain the bare maximum of useful consonants, other that having duplications. Some Kikuyu dialects such as the Ndia actually have 'fa'.

There is also no l (kikuyus sound l and r the same
no p
no q
no s (s and c sound the same)
no v
no x
no z

Did you know that Kikuyu is a phonetic language that uses tones instead of syllables to express the meaning of words?

for example, 'iria' could mean 'those things' or 'milk' or 'lake' depending on where you put your tones.

Wamax, I may be missing something but to me words like baba, ibuku, bata would make much more sense written fafa, ifuku, fata etc. I don't know who made the decision to write them with a b and what reasoning was behind that exactly. Especially because there words to me which have a b sound like mbari, mbaara etc. Why two different sounds should be represented by the same letter beats me. in the case of using c instead of the English sh, I have no issues as there s no conflict.

I recently purchased a kamba dictionary written by John Haroun Mwau, MP, assistant minister. Not bad, as it is a 3 in 1. Kamba - English, Kamba - Kamba, which would probably make the kaos the first tribe to actually achieve this feat, correct me if am wrong, and English-Kamba. So what do I find in that they use the same vowels as the Gikuyu. This would mean that the Embu and Meru also do and maybe the Luhyas? In which case the potential market for the keyboard I suggested would increase to almost 50% of all Kenyans.

The dictionary has suprisingly few words, only 8 000. An English Dictionary has probably no less than a
100 000 words. I don't know how successful the whole venture is for the guy, unless kaos read a lot in their language. My recent frustrations at Kenyan bookshops would leads me to believe that Kenyans don't generally read in their languages. The number of books not being printed nowadays is astonishing, which i why I wish Kenya had some sort of Ebay, becaus I'm almost certain that there is someone somewhere who owns the books am looking for.

Wamax, did you ever make it to the archives? They charge 200 bob for an annual subscription and a 50 bob entrance charge per day. You can photocopy for 5 bob, mostly for two pages.