Of troy asked where the word "safari" came from I suspected it might be swahili, but in searching a found a new word site I haven't explored yet but looks promising:
http://home.earthlink.net/~ruthpett/safari/megalist.htmWhen I looked at dictionary in the above word site, it said "safari" is from an Arabic word, as of troy guessed, and I doubted. Sweet are the uses of adversity. It can even pay to be wrong. Bill
From one who is most often wrong, I, too, Bill guessed that safari was Swahili, not Arabic, but, hey, it isn't as bad as trying to drive with me at the wheel from point A to point B. Guaranteed every single time I'm gonna end up in point Z.
Now is giraffe Arabic, too? Seems I read this past week or mebbe three weeks ago that it is. Was it here?
Beast regards,
WordWildebeest (When God had finished making up all the beasts, he took the remaining parts, threw them together, and created the wildebeest. I think that's a Swahili folk tale, but I'm probably wrong.)
well to be fair Dr bill, swahili, is a language rich in arabic words. its a fair guess that about 40% of swahili words go back to arabic. Portugues, is a big contributor too. i am not sure, but i think swahili is a creole. the basic structure come from one of the local african languages, but much of the vocabulary is imported.
it isn't as
bad as trying to drive with me at the wheel from point A to point B. Guaranteed every single time I'm gonna
end up in point Z.Is that Zanzabar, or Zyzyx? What the heck, the journey's the trip, not the destination!
Fascinating, and prompted me to find the extensive discussion of Swahili at
http://victorian.fortunecity.com/louvre/88/swahili/swahili_history.html, and the continuation link at the bottom of that page. Extracts:
The Swahili language, is basically of Bantu (African) origin but with strong Arab and Persian influence. There are those that assert that the language came about as a result of Arabs and Persians coming to the East African coast and those that maintain that the language was spoken in East Africa before the coming of Arabs and Persians.
...
Such borrowing is comparable to the proportion of French, Latin, and Greek loans used in English. Although this proportion for Arabic loans may be as high as 50 percent in classical Swahili poetry (traditionally written in Arabic script), it amounts to less than twenty percent of the lexicon of the spoken language.