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This is a list of English language words that come from any of the Sub-Saharan African languages. It excludes placenames except where they have become common words.

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This is a list of English language words that come from any of the Sub-Saharan African languages. It excludes placenames except where they have become common words.

This list is incomplete; you can help by expanding it.

Words of West African origin[edit]

Words of Bantu origin[edit]

  • banjo - probably Bantu mbanza
  • basenji - breed of dog from the Congo
  • boma - probably from Swahili
  • bwana - from Swahili, meaning an important person or safari leader
  • chimpanzee - Bantu chimpenze, from nchima ("blue monkey") and mzee "respectable gentleman"[clarification needed]
  • dengue - possibly from Swahili dinga
  • funk - from kikongo lu-fuki "bad body odor"
  • gnu - from Bushman !nu through Khoikhoi i-ngu and Dutch gnoe
  • goober - possibly from Bantu (Kikongo and Kimbundu nguba)
  • gumbo - from Bantu (Kimbundu ngombo meaning "okra")
  • impala - from Zulu im-pala
  • indaba - from Xhosa or Zulu languages - 'stories' or 'news' typically conflated with 'meeting' (often used in South African English)
  • jumbo - from Swahili (jambo or jumbe or from Kongo nzamba "elephant")
  • kalimba
  • Kwanzaa - from the Swahili phrase matunda ya kwanza, meaning "first fruits".
  • lapa - from Sotho languages - enclosure or barbecue area (often used in South African English)
  • macaque - from Bantu makaku through Portuguese and French
  • mamba - from Zulu or Swahili mamba
  • marimba - from Bantu (Kimbundu and Swahili marimba, malimba)
  • okapi - from a language in the Congo
  • safari - from Swahili travel, ultimately from Arabic
  • sangoma - from Zulu - traditional healer (often used in South African English)
  • Tilapia - Possibly a latinization "thiape", the Tswana word for fish.[4]
  • tsetse - from a Bantu language (Tswana tsetse, Luhya tsiisi)
  • ubuntu - African ideology, from the saying "uMntu ungumntu ngaBantu" - "a human is a human through humans" - Bantu languages
  • vuvuzela - musical instrument, name of Zulu or Nguni origin
  • zebra - possibly from a language in the Congo
  • zombie - Central African (Kikongo zumbi, Kimbundu nzambi)

References[edit]

 This article includes a list of references, but its sources remain unclear because it has insufficient inline citations. Please help to improve this article by introducing more precise citations. (July 2012)

Specific citations:

  1. ^ The Etymology of 'Buckaroo', Julian Mason, American Speech, Vol. 35, No. 1 (Feb., 1960), pp. 51-55,
  2. ^ "chimp definition | Dictionary.com". Dictionary.reference.com. Retrieved 2009-06-06. 
  3. ^ http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?EtymologyOfOkay
  4. ^ Tilapia etymology

General references:

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=List_of_English_words_of_African_origin&oldid=555188978"
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