Classes 7 and 8: tools, languages, body parts

You may have noticed that all Comorian language names start with shi-: shimaore, shingazidja, shindzuani, shimwali. And so do many everyday objects: shio (book), shitswa (head), shifuba (chest).

No coincidence. That's class 7, whose singular prefix is *shi- (or sh- before a vowel). In the plural, these nouns shift to class 8 with the prefix zi- (or z-*).

Class 7 contains:

• All Bantu language names — a universal convention
• Tools and manufactured objects
• A few body parts (often visible segments: head, chest)

A productive formula in Bantu: take the island or people name, add shi- in front, get the language name.

• Maore (Mayotte) + shi- → shimaore
• Ngazidja (Grande Comore) + shi- → shingazidja
• Ndzuani (Anjouan) + shi- → shindzuani
• Mwali (Mohéli) + shi- → shimwali

Same logic in swahili: Swahili (people) + ki- (the equivalent of shi-) → Kiswahili. Same in Zulu: Zulu + isi- → isiZulu.

Language names have no plural — you don't say « shimaores ». A singular collective.

The word shisiwa (« island ») is class 7 (shi-). Its regular plural would be class 8 (zi-): zisiwa? — a form to be checked, no source of the project gives it.

masiwa is not that plural: it is a class-6 collective noun, « the archipelago » (Ahmed-Chamanga, 1992, p. 20; the Nisusoma shimaore booklet also tells shisiwa « island » from masiwa « archipelago », 2019, p. 44). That's why shikomori is sometimes called shimasiwa: « the language of the archipelago ».

Lesson 3.7 explores classes 9/10 — the class of animals, concrete objects, and many loanwords from colonial-era French. Its quirk: singular and plural are often identical.