Re: Plural prefix?

Trebor Jung wrote:
Are there any languages that pluralize nouns with prefixes?

Ray Brown wrote:
Most certainly - _all_ the Bantulangs, which occupy quite a large area of
>sub-Saharan Africa right down to the Cape. But these langs also
>singularize nouns with prefixes  :)
>
>Examples from Swahili:
>SING.  PLURAL
>mtu        watu     (person ~ persons)
>kitabu     vitabu   (book ~ books)
>jicho      macho     (eye ~ eyes)
>(Swahili, like the other Bantulangs, has several different classes of
>nouns, each with its own singular & plural prefix
_________
Interesting note: Foreign borrowings into Swahili can generate interesting
forms when it comes to singular/plural prefixes.  English "bartender" was
borrowed into Swahili as "batenda" which, over time, was interpreted as
being a plural word due to misinterpretation of the first syllable as the
plural "ba-" prefix, thus eventually generating a new singular
form "matenda" based on the ma-/ba- class of nouns.

--John Quijada