ngapi

English

Alternative forms

• ngapee, nga-pee

Etymology

Transliteration of Burmese ငါးပိ (nga:pi., literally “pressed fish”).

Noun

ngapi (uncountable)

1. (cooking) A pungent Burmese condiment made from fermented and compressed fish or shrimp paste.
   • 1876, "Burmah" in the Encyclopædia Britannica, 9th ed., Vol. IV, p. 552:

     The rivers and lakes abound with fish, from which the inhabitants prepare their favourite condiment of ngapee.

   • 1880, J.H. Titcomb, chapter VII, in Personal Recollections of British Burma and Its Church Mission Work in 1878-79‎^[1]:

     Passing by Henzada, because intending to return thither, we went on to Yangdoon or Nyoungdoon, a large and thriving ports celebrated for its fishing trade. Of this fact we were soon abundantly convinced by the abominable smell of nga-pee, a kind of dried and putrid fish, of which the Burmese are particularly fond; nor by that circumstance alone, for we counted a hundred and twenty large trading vessels anchored along the bank.

   • 1882, James George Scott, The Burman: His Life and Notions, Ch. xxviii: "Nga-pee":

     Travellers on the steamers of the Irrawaddy Flotilla Company are wont to rail in no measured terms at the fish-paste which forms an invariable and obtrusively evident part of the cargo, yet no Burman would think a dinner complete without his modicum of nga-pee, and it is a noteworthy fact that one form of the condiment is of frequent appearance on English dinner-tables in the East, under the name of balachong, a term borrowed from the Straits Settlements, but which designates nothing more nor less than a specially prepared variety of nga-pee.

Hyponyms

• balachong

Translations

a pungent Burmese condiment made from fermented and compressed fish or shrimp paste

• Bengali: নাপ্পি (bn) (nappi)
• Burmese: ငါးပိ (my) (nga:pi.)
• Indonesian: belacan (id)
• Khmer: កាពិ (km) (kaapiʼ)
• Lao: ກະປິ (ka pi)
• Malay: belacan
• Mon: နဲကဲကၠောန်ခရံက်
• Shan: ပႃၼဝ်ႈၵုင်ႈ (pǎa nāo kūng)
• Tagalog: bagoong, alamang (tl)
• Thai: กะปิ (th) (gà-bpì)
• Vietnamese: mắm tôm (vi)

Further reading

• Oxford English Dictionary, 3rd ed. "ngapi, n." Oxford University Press (Oxford), 2003.

Anagrams

• aping, ganpi

Ngarrindjeri

Alternative forms

• ngan

Pronoun

ngapi

1. I; the first person singular emphatic personal pronoun.

Swahili

Pronunciation

• Audio (Kenya):

  (file)

Adjective

-ngapi (declinable)

1. how many?

Usage notes

Follows the noun and behaves like a normal adjective; for example, nyumba ngapi? ("how many houses?").

Inflection

Inflected forms of -ngapi (plural only)

Noun class	singular	plural
m-wa class(I/II)	—	wangapi
m-mi class(III/IV)	—	mingapi
ji-ma class(V/VI)	—	mangapi
ki-vi class(VII/VIII)	—	vingapi
n class(IX/X)	—	ngapi
u class(XI)	—	see n(X) or ma(VI) class
pa class(XVI)	pangapi
ku class(XVII)	kungapi
mu class(XVIII)	mungapi