A marimba is a musical instrument you play by hitting wooden bars with mallets (soft sticks). It looks like a xylophone: a row of bars of different lengths, each with a tube or box under it to make the sound bigger and warmer. The marimba’s voice is usually deeper and rounder than a xylophone’s. You hear it in concert music and in music from parts of Africa and Latin America. It is a fairly specialist word; most students meet it in music class, not in everyday chat. English took it from Portuguese marimba, and that probably came from a Bantu language (perhaps Kimbundu), where it already meant this kind of instrument. Looking similar is not the same as being the same instrument — teachers often stand them side by side so you can hear the difference.

馬林巴琴