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IMITATIVE WORDS.
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with the English word 'water,' a name is made for 'waterfall,' tum-wâta. The Gallas of East Africa declare that a box on the ear seems to them to make a noise like tub, for they call its sound tubdjeda, that is, 'to say tub.' In the same language, tuma is 'to beat,' whence tumtu, 'a workman, especially one who beats, a smith.' With the aid of another imitative word, bufa 'to blow,' the Gallas can construct this wholly imitative sentence, tumtun bufa bufti, 'the smith blows with bellows,' as an English child might say, 'the tumtum puffs the puffer.' This imitative sound seems to have obtained a footing among the Aryan verb-roots, as in Sanskrit tup, tubh 'to smite,' while in Greek, tup, tump, has the meaning of 'to beat, to thump,' producing for instance (Symbol missingGreek characters), tympanum, 'a drum or tomtom.' Again, the verb to crack has become in modern English as thorough a root-word as the language possesses. The mere imitation of the sound of breaking has passed into a verb to break; we speak of a cracked cup or a cracked reputation without a thought of imitation of sound; but we cannot yet use the German krachen or French craquer in this way, for they have not developed in meaning as our word has, but remain in their purely imitative stage. There are two corresponding Sanskrit words for the saw, kra-kara, kra-kacha, that is to say, the ‘kra-maker, kra-crier;' and it is to be observed that all such terms, which expressly state that they are imitations of sound, are particularly valuable evidence in these enquiries, for whatever doubt there may be as to other words being really derived from imitative sound, there can, of course, be none here. Moreover, there is evidence of the same sound having given rise to imitative words in other families of language, Dahoman kra-kra, 'a watchman's rattle;' Grebo grikâ 'a saw;' Aino chacha to saw;' Malay graji 'a saw,' karat 'to gnash the teeth,' karot 'to make a grating noise;' Coptic khrij 'to gnash the teeth,' khrajrej 'to grate.' Another form of the imitation is given in the descriptive Galla expression cacakdjeda, i.e., 'to say