Page:A vocabulary of the Yoruba language (IA vocabularyofyoru00crow).pdf/13

 IT is with much diffidence that I venture to lay before the public the following scanty remarks on the distinguishing peculiarities of the Yoruba language. My design has been, to illustrate a few of its leading features, in the hope of awakening an interest in the subject, and of giving a stimulus to further investigation. The full appreciation of the character and genius of a language demands a longer and more familiar acquaintance with it than has yet fallen to the lot of Europeans in the case of the Yoruba. And where the analogies with kindred or cognate dialects are as yet undiscovered, this difficulty is incomparably greater than it is where those analogies are traceable. In taking up, for example, such a language as the Sicuana, supposing the learner to have formed a previous acquaintance with the Kafir, the analogous system of prefixes strikes him at the very first entrance on his studies, and suggests inquiries as to further analogies, which approve themselves to his mind as probable; so that he does not pursue his researches at random. But the very reverse of this is the case where such analogies are wanting: there he is, as it were, feeling his way in the dark, without the advantage of knowing even what to seek for. Such is the difficulty which we have to encounter in the study of the Yoruba. However beautiful or perfect its vocabulary or construction may be, we are left to feel after its perfections, and to light upon them one by one, as if by chance, from the want of those known affinities with other tongues which should be the clue to guide us through the labyrinth.