Page:Language and the Study of Language.djvu/366

344 in their resemblances and differences of material and structure.

Apart from the dialects already mentioned, as belonging to the Hamitic or the Semitic family, the best established and most widely extended group of African languages is that one which fills nearly the whole southern part of the continent, from a few degrees north of the equator to the Cape of Good Hope. It is variously called the Bantu, the Chuana, or the Zingian family; or, by a simple geographical title, the South-African. The material as well as structural coincidences between its numerous members are fully sufficient to prove its unity. Its subdivisions, and the separate dialects composing them, need not here be rehearsed. None of these dialects has any other culture than that which it has received under missionary auspices in the most recent period. They are all of an agglutinative character, forming words of many syllables, and, in a certain way, they are rich enough in forms, and in the capacity of indicating different shades of meaning and relation. Their most marked peculiarity is their extensive use of pronominal prefixes to the nouns; these are numerous—in some languages, as many as sixteen—and distinguish the number and generic class of the nouns to which they are attached. Thus, in Zulu, we have um-fana, 'boy,' aba-fana, 'boys;' in-komo, 'cow,' izin-komo, 'cows;' ili-zwi, 'word,' ama-zwi, 'words,' and so on. But farther, these same prefixes, or characteristic parts of them, enter into the formation of the adjectives, the possessive and relative pronouns, and the personal pronouns employed as subject or object of the verbs, agreeing with or referring to the nouns to which they respectively belong: for example, aba-fana b-ami aba-kulu, ba tanda, 'my large boys, they love;' but izin-komo z-ami izin-kulu, zi tanda, 'my large cows, they love.' Thus is produced a kind of alliterative congruence, like the rhyming one often seen in Latin, as vir-o optim-o maxim-o, femin-æ optim-æ maxim-æ. Of inflection by cases