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This website gathers in a single place everything known about Malagasy words and expressions.
It already contains the largest collection of Malagasy words ever assembled,
as well as many facts and illustrations about Madagascar.
It is available free of charge on the worldwide web.
It does not make advertisements.
To find a word:
- browse the many lists provided provided at the top of the page, or
- type in the input field above a Malagasy, English or French word.
A comment icon ( ) at the bottom of each page
allows you to send us emails to report
problems and suggestions.
Contents of the web site
The above counts change frequently, since the site is updated several times per week.
Malagasy words and expressions are continuously added.
Foreign words are added indirectly, as a by-product of the translations of new
Malagasy words.
How are the Malagasy words counted?
- Past and future tenses, as well as imperative mood of verbs (active, passive and relative)
are not counted:
-- mijery adds 1, while nijery, hijery and mijere add 0;
-- atao adds 1, while natao, hatao and ataovy add 0.
- Pronoun-suffixed forms (dative and genitive forms) are not counted:
--
-- atao adds 1, while ataoko, ataonao, ataony, etc. add 0.
--
-- trano adds 1, while tranoko, tranonao, tranony, etc. add 0.
- A set of homonym words count for a single word:
--
laza (fame), laza (festivity), laza (Ficus), and laza (hatchet) add 1, not 4.
- Orthographic variations within a dialect are not counted:
--
amaray, amaraina and amaraiñy (tomorrow in Antankarana) add 1, not 3.
- Compound words are generaly counted with the expressions, not with the words:
--
zana-bola adds 0 to the count of words, but adds 1 to the count of expressions.
- Nouns (historical, geographical) are separately counted in their own categories.
Thus we can be assured that the number of Malagasy words claimed here, 57 763 to be precise,
is a conservative minimum, and not artificially inflated.
MADAGASIKARA: the CONTINENT of the MALAGASY
The relationship between the name of the country, MADAGASIKARA (Madagascar in English),
and the name of its inhabitants and their language, MALAGASY,
is explained as follows:
Firstly, the letters D and L can be exchanged in certain situations.
We see it frequently in the dialects of the Island: vady/valy (spouse),
fady/faly (forbidden), anjavidy/anjavily (heather).
We see it also in North America, where Dakota and Lakota dictionaries have lists of words
with identical meaning and a spelling difference from D to L.
Let us apply that exchange:
MADAGASIKARA becomes MALAGASIKARA.
Secondly, MALAGASIKARA is in fact MALAGASY-KARA;
one can recognize in the ending the Persian or Arabic word قارة
which means continent.
It is unclear if the name comes from the Persians or the Arabs. Either way, we note
that the combined areas of all the islands known to these navigators,
from Cyprus to the Comoros and from Sri Lanka to the Balearic Islands,
barely amount to one sixth
of the Great Island's area; small wonder that they viewed it as a continent.
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