Page:George McCall Theal, Ethnography and condition of South Africa before A.D. 1505 (2nd ed, 1919).djvu/63

Rh know them, n I, a thou, ha he, she, it, i we, u you. Of the numerals, the second, ǃku or ǃú, at least offers no resemblance either to the same numeral in the Bantu languages, or in Hottentot; and beyond two every higher number is ǂoaya many, although the Bushman may indicate with his fingers to some extent the exact number, e.g. ǂoaya, showing four fingers, i.e. as many as four, will indicate four, and ǂoaya, showing seven fingers, seven.

“In this deficiency of higher numerals the Bushman race appears to be even more primitive than the Australian tribes, which generally have distinct names for the numerals as far as three or four. But the exceedingly ancient character of the Bushman language appears to be in no way better indicated than by their very curious phonetic system. It is customary to class Hottentot and Bushman together under the category of clicking languages; and, to a certain extent, this is correct. But in the frequency of these strange sounds, in the number of their varieties, and in the range of organs which are employed in their pronunciation, the Bushman tongue by far exceeds the Hottentot language. In Bushman, clicks are not merely produced by the tongue, but also by the lips. There can be no question that, among the sounds of human language clicks are those which it requires the greatest effort to produce. The study of the history of language shows us that the further the speech of a people develops, the more it throws off such sounds as impede the pronunciation or render it more difficult. Those languages, therefore, in which the sounds are easiest of utterance are the farthest removed from the primitive phonetic systems of human speech, whilst those which abound in uncouth and almost unpronounceable sounds must be presumed to have better retained their ancient phonetic features.”

As late as September 1873 Dr. Bleek intimated in an article in the Cape Monthly Magazine that he had not even then completely acquired all the information that he needed. His words were: “the present attempt thoroughly to master the Bushman language has been dictated by purely scientific motives.” And in classifying the languages of South Africa, he said:

“Three kinds of native languages are spoken within the borders of this colony:—1, Kaffir, belonging to the great family of prefix-pronominal languages, which fill almost the whole of South Africa,