Page:George McCall Theal, Ethnography and condition of South Africa before A.D. 1505 (2nd ed, 1919).djvu/64

40 and extend to the north-west at least as far as Sierra Leone; 2, Hottentot, the only known South African member of the very extensive sex-denoting family which has spread itself over South Africa, Europe, and a great part of Asia; 3, Bushman, relationship unknown as yet, presenting outward features of the so-called genderless (or as Max Muller calls it, Turanian) class, if related to Hottentot, so exceedingly metamorphosed as to be more different from it than English is from Latin; yet very primitive in its uncouth sounds and in certain structural features, while many others are evidently the result of processes of contraction, and of strong grammatical and phonetical changes, the explanation of which leads us back far into the former history of this original language.”

It might be thought that human organs of sound would be incapable of producing a greater variety of clicks and guttural aspirations than those used by Bushmen in ordinary conversation, but it was not so. They put language into the mouths of various animals, and in doing so gave to each variety of beast and bird a peculiar lisp, or grunt, or hiss, or bleat, usually an imitation of the natural sound produced by it, which they introduced in every word. No adult European could ever hope to imitate these sounds, and Dr. Bleek's widow informed the writer that her husband abandoned the attempt in despair. They were not needed, however, for an analytical study of the language, and therefore nothing was lost through not being able to imitate them. To the ordinary clicks a European ear soon becomes accustomed, and they are not then unpleasant, as men find after being long in contact with the Xosas or the Namaqua Hottentots, who, however, use them far more sparingly than did the Bushmen; but the deep guttural sounds proceeding from the throats of the pygmy savages remained always very disagreeable. A Bushman on a hillside calling to another at a distance, for instance, might be said to croak rather than to speak.