kirta

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English

Etymology

From or related to Kanuri kə́rtá (“floating island”).[1]

Noun

kirta (plural kirtas)

  1. A floating island on Lake Chad.
    • 1983, Andre Iltis, Jacques Lemoalle, The Aquatic Vegetation of Lake Chad, in Lake Chad: Ecology and Productivity of a Shallow Tropical Ecosystem (edited by Cannouze, Durand and Leveque):
      The kirtas were very numerous until 1967 These islands disappeared fairly quickly when the average level of the lake decreased below 282 m.
    • 2004, Caterine Batello, Marzio Marzot, Adamou Touré, Peter Kenmore, The Future is an Ancient Lake:
      From up there [satellites], the immense masses of vegetation that you see seem like solid ground, but instead they are all kirta, the floating islands.
    • 2004, Chet A. Van Duzer, Floating Islands: A Global Bibliography : with an Edition and Translation of G.C. Munz's Exercitatio Academica de Insulis Natantibus (1711):
      ... kirtas or floating islands of aquatic vegetation, usually of Papyrus or Phragmites, but also sometimes of Vossia cuspidata, which can break free from vegetation fringing islands in Lake Chad  […]

References

  1. ^ Christian Seignobos, Henry Tourneux, Le Nord-Cameroun à travers ses mots (2002), page 157: "kirta, n. f. < kanuri «île flottante» (Cyffer & Hutchinson 1990, p. 95), donné parfois comme venant du buduma; cf. m̀pàdə̀ «île»."
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