"Kisima cha maji"
Translation:A water well
8 CommentsThis discussion is locked.
Etymology (maji)
From Proto-Bantu *màjíjɪ̀.
Noun
maji (ma class, plural only)
1) water (clear liquid H2O).
2) njia ya maji — waterway
3) any liquid
From Wiktionary:
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/maji
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstruction:Proto-Bantu/m%C3%A0j%C3%ADj%C9%AA%CC%80
Why does it have to be A water well and cannot just be water well for the translation? Or more specifically, what is it about this sentence construction that makes that obvious? Or is this a beta mistake?
1850
Wells aren't necessarily for water. I got interested in Swahili after drilling several oil and gas wells in inland Tanzania, and they are also drilling for helium (yes, the squeaky-voice gas) in the Rift Valley.
Aidan, thank you for your post. I was wondering why it had to be called a water well and thought "Doesn't a well imply water?" But you cleared it up for me through your post.
- 1850
There is also a small market for waste-disposal - of fluids, obviously (maybe not obviously?) - into wellbores. You've got to go deep to be sure it's not going tom come up again before lawyers are extinct, but one of the "do something later, but not now" plans for coping with climate change does involve pulling lots of CO2 out of the air (techniques undefined) and putting it down into the ground. If someone else does the job of getting the CO2 into a pipeline, I'm sure I can find a place to put the CO2 for a few hundred millennia. There's just that tricky first step of getting the CO2 out of the air and into a pipeline. I can't help there - not my skill set.
