-
A Note on Typography and Word Usage
- University Press of Mississippi
- Chapter
- Additional Information
xiii A Note on Typography and Word Usage This work uses words and phrases from three foreign languages : Spanish, Lucumí, and, to a limited extent, Yorùbá. Throughout the text these words, upon their first appearance, appear in italics and are accompanied with a definition. Written Lucumí can be best described as an Hispanicized version of Yorùbá. While diacritical marks on Yorùbá words indicate pitch, on Lucumí words they function as they would in Spanish, representing a stressed syllable. I rely extensively on the spellings provided in Lydia Cabrera’s Lucumí-Spanish dictionary, Anagó.1 The plural form of Lucumí words is identical to the singular form. In Spanish, Lucumí nouns, like all nouns, are preceded by a definite article. El and los indicate single and plural masculine nouns, respectively, while la and las indicate singular and plural feminine nouns, respectively. That is, to indicate one orisha in Spanish one would use the construction, el oricha, and to indicate more than one orisha in Spanish one would use the construction, los oricha. Since English does not share this convention with Spanish, I add an s or occasionally es to the end of Lucumí words to indicate the plural form. This convention is applied uniformly with one exception, the word batá. This page intentionally left blank [44.201.64.238] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 00:14 GMT) The Artistry of Afro-Cuban Batá Drumming This page intentionally left blank ...