that may be called the African family “ par excellence,” and which
extends from the Occidental to the Oriental coasts, re-descending
even into the Austral portion.
All the languages that form part of this group, and in general the
tongues of the whole of this portion of the globe, possess one system
of vocalization, otherwise termed, a powerful phonology ; and sometimes
even a disposition almost rhythmical, which gained for them, on
the part of some philologists, the name of alliteral tongues. Thus,
although the consonants in them he often aspirated, and affect odd pronunciations,
they are never accumulated together. Double letters are
rare, and in certain tongues unknown. For example, in Qaffr, the
vowels have a pronunciation clear and precise. In the major number
of the languages of Southern Africa, and in some few of those of Central
Africa, the words always terminate with vowels, and present regular
alternations of vowels and consonants. This is above all true of the
Caffirarian languages.19 M. d’Avezac writes about the Yébou, or Ebo,
tongue spoken in Guinea : in regard to euphony, this language may
be considered as one of the softest in the world; vowels abound in
it; and it is in this respect remarkable that (except, perhaps, some
rare and doubtful exceptions) not merely all the words, but even all
the^ syllables end in vowels : the consonants offer no roughness in
their pronunciation ; and many are articulated with a sort of quaint-
ness (mignardise), which renders it difficult to seize them, and still
more difficult to express graphically by the letters of our alphabet.“
Among some other African tongues, on the contrary, the termination
is ordinarily nasal. Amid the majority of the languages of northern
and midland Africa, the words finish with a vowel. Such is what one
observes in the Woloe, the Bulom, the Temmani, the Tousnali, and the
Fasoql.
As concerns the system proper of sounds, and the vocabulary,
they vary greatly in African languages : and the harmony, sonorousness,
and fluidity of speech, frequently meet, in certain sounds, with
notable exceptions. It is the character of these various sounds that
may serve as a basis for the classification of the tongues of Africa.'
All present compound vowels and consonants ; amongst which, m »,
m b, are of the frequentest employment. The duplex consonant!
n Jc,n d, appear likewise. Finally, in some African idioms, one en-
countersthe consonantsd g, g I, kb, bp, bm, he, kh, rh,pmb, b l n .21
“ See on this subject The Kafir Language; comprising a sketch of its history, by the R e v
J o h n W. A p p l e y a r d (King William’s Town, 1 8 5 0 ), p . 65 seqq.
20 Mémoires de la Société Ethnologique de Paris, ii. part 2, p. 50.
21 r“ tIlese illustrative notations no attempt is made, of course, to follow any of the
diversified “ standard alphabets” recently deVised for the use of Missionaries. On this
question of the expediency of such alphabets, and their success so far, I coincide entirely
with the criticism of a very scientific friend, Prop. g. g. Haebeman (Report on the Present
Aspirates and the sibilants are not rare, any more than the use,
simple or compound, of the w . Among some languages of this
family, the palatal and dental letters are confounded, or at least are
not clearly distinguishable. Several tongues are completely devoid
of certain letters : for instance, the Odji, and divers others, are wanting
in the letter I; and replace it, whenever they meet with it in what
foreign words they may appropriate, by r, or d, or n.
The accordances, of different parts of the discourse, are often
regulated by a euphonic system which is felt very strongly, in sundry
idioms, notably in the Yazouba. The radicals are more frequently
monosyllabic. It is the addition of this radical with a modifying
particle (which is most commonly a prefix) that gives birth to the
other words. The relations of cause, of power, of reciprocity, of reflectivity,
of agent, &c., as well as those of time, number, and sex, are
always expressed through a similar system. The radicals, thus united
to formative particles, become, in their turn, veritable roots, and constitute
the source (souche) of new words. One can comprehend, nevertheless,
how very imperfect is such a system, for defining clearly the
relations, at once so multiplied and so distinct, existing between
words. There exist above all some for which African languages
are of extreme poverty;-for example, the ideas of time and motion.
And this character approximates them, in a manner rather striking,
to the Semitic tongues. As in these latter idioms, African languages
do not distinguish the present from the future, or the future from
the past: otherwise, they express both these tenses by one and the
same particle. The penury and the vagueness of particles indicative
of the propositions,—or to speak with grammarians, of the prefixes
to prepositions—are again far more pronounced in the majority
of African idioms than amidst the Semitic. They enunciate, by the
same particle, ideas as different as those of movement towards a
State of our knowledge of Linguistic Ethnology, made to the American Association for the
Advancement of Science, Aug. 1856). My experiences of the hopelessness of arriving at
any exact countervalues in European characters for Arabic intonations alone, so as to
enable a foreigner, who has not heard Arabs speak, even to pronounce correotly, render me
very sceptical as to the ultimate possibility of transcribing, through any one series of
Alphabetic signs, the infinitude of distinct vocalizations uttered by the diverse groups of
human types; which articulations, as Prof. A o a s s iz has so well remarked, take their
original departure from the different conformations of the throat inherent in the race-character
of each distinct group of mankind.
Should any one, however, desire to put this universal “ Missionary Alphabet” through
an experimentum crucis, he need not travel far to test its applicability to remote, abnormal, and
arbarous tongues, by trying its efficacy upon three cognate languages close at hand. Let
a Frenchman, wholly unacquainted with English, transcribe into the “ Missionary Alpha-
et, a short discourse as he hears it from the mouth of a Londoner. Then, pass his manuscript
on to a German (of course knowing neither French nor English), and let him read it
aloud to an Englishman. “ Le diable meme ne s’y reconnaitrait pas!”— G. R. G.]