I've been thinking about education and I'm wondering:

Who came up with the Kikuyu alphabet?


Why is it that in Many countries - bantu, words are written like that....

For example,
Mugabe, is Mugabe
Moi is Moi,
Mbeki if Mbeki
Kabila is Kabila

BUT KIKUYU,

Kibaki is Kifaki/Kefake?
Baba/papa is fafa?
Kabogo is Kafogo?
Mucene is Moshene?
Shosho is cucu?

Who came up with the kikuyu alphabet? - it couldn't be the english? Could it have been developed by non-english?

Do you think Kikuyus will be okay with revising the alphabet?



Thanks

Edited

Mugabe is Mukaave.
Not just Kikuyu
Zulu: Khumalo is KUmalo (not Khumalo)
Xhosa: Mbeki is Mbegi
Somali: Cabdi is Abdi (not Kabdi); Xassan is Hassan

A UG buddy of mine used to call Kibera Chibera then laugh loudly because in Luganda chibero is thigh so he would tell me "I'm going to chibero" when going to land.

The f in Kikuyu is not pronounced like the normal F. You place your lips as if to say B (a bilabial plosive) but allow air to flow through as you do with fricatives such as f hence baba not fafa. I still remember my Linguistics 101 class makofi kwangu

@Lolest!, I agree with @Money Whisperer. The proper Kikuyu pronunciation of baba isn't exactly fafa. It's closer to bhabha.

I decided to post on this thread when I saw @seppuku parading his ignorance in public.

FYI there IS a Gikuyu alphabet. Just as there are English, French, Mandarin, Maragoli and Nandi ones.

I am one of those who studied in a native tongue in primary school so I happen to know a little about the language.

The language is Gikuyu. Non-Gikuyus will call it Kikuyu and that's due to the influence of Swahili.

An alphabet is about phonetics, reading and writing so you can't pick one one aspect and disregard the others.

Gikuyu alphabet has 21 letters (no f,l,p,q and x). There are also accents which modify the pronunciations of vowels such as 'i', 'o' and 'u'. Because I'm typing from an office keyboard ya wazungu I can't show you the accents here. But I have enabled them on my home computer.

To answer the OP, the 'f' in 'Kifaki' and 'fafa' is represented by the letter 'b' in writing.

'B' appearing alone is always pronounced as 'f'.

The 'b' sound in mboco (beans) is written as 'mb'. In fact, some Gikuyus wazees from Murang'a and Nyeri pronounce the 'm' in 'mb' like mburi, mbembe etc.

In short, Gikuyu differs from Swahili in that the pronunciation of the words is not literal. I believe the same is true of English, French and many other languages. That is just how they developed.

I do not think Gikuyus will be OK revising the alphabet as it will mean having to reprint all written material such as bibles, books and such.

Edit. I have just seen @MoneyWhisperer's post regarding pronunciation of the 'b' sound. What he has said is absolutely correct.

I think over time the original sound has been modified owing to the influence of other languages which have a softer 'f' like sound.

I also forgot that the 'Z' is absent in Gikuyu alphabet. Thanks @Mtublack. So there are 20 letters.

@The Clown, I will go ahead and respond to your post in spite of the fact that it smacks of scholarly arrogance, a common disguise for intellectual dwarfism.

What you call the Gikuyu alphabet is, even by your own admission, merely a subset of the Latin alphabet. I fail to see how not using some of the letters of someone else's alphabet makes it your own. Most of the other things you say make sense, but I could do with a little less conceit.

am not saying its wrong am just looking at it from the context of the thread where the purpose is to look at the sounds and by extension pronunciation and spellings of Gikuyu words, just wondering where did the word kikuyu came from

@ seppuku

"Most of the other things you say make sense, but I could do with a little less conceit".

Yes, YOU certainly could.

It is Gĩkũyũ, not Gikuyu. The diacritics are critical since we are discussing syntax, form and phonetics. In lower primary where instruction was in mother tongue for us bundus types, we used to call the diacritics "ngobia"; Leaving them out led to the homework getting marked wrong.
However, typing those things (they are not on the keyboard and/or Shift+Key arrangements) is hard, so the wrong "Gikuyu" form is tolerated.
Interestingly, this tutelage in mother tongue helps in reading the Gĩkũyũ Bible. For those not practised (like Xmass visitors from town), the fits and starts induce fits of laughter in the country church. Back in the day, I remember being one of only a few people able to read it fluently - and that came with the consequence of not being able to skip church.