1862.] 3 [Lesley 



bling the implements ■with crenulated edges described as saws 

 by Prof. Morlot. 



Prof. Lesley presented three short original Vocabularies of 

 African Dialects, obtained by Rev. Alexander Crummell, 

 from among four hundred recaptured slaves, landed from a 

 United States war vessel at Sino, in Liberia. 



The following words were obtained by the Rev. Mr. Crummell, 

 from a crowd of recaptured Africans, landed at Sino, in Liberia, 

 about two hundred miles west of Cape Palmas. The slaves were 

 about four hundred in number, and apparently of four or five distinct 

 nationalities, each group conversing and keeping apart. Mr. Crum- 

 mell had the aid of several intelligent interpreters whom he found 

 among them, and took great pains to secure both the true words and 

 the correct pronunciation. As the English language is gradually 

 supplanting the native African dialects along that coast, every au- 

 thentic addition to our collections becomes valuable. In re-writing 

 these words I have employed the continental vowels. The v is a 

 pure English v, and the consonants are written double only when 

 clearly pronounced double. The most striking feature of these little 

 vocabularies, is the application of almost the same dental dissyllable to 

 a number of very dissimilar objects. I refer to the words Ade (1), 

 Ato (3), Ane (4), Ede (6), Afie (8), lonu (woman), Addo (stomach), 

 Adu (teeth), Ade (tongue), Edda (hair), Etta (head), Etto (ear), 

 Ido (eye). I suspected that some error had been occasioned by the 

 use of pantomimic references to the members of the head, and that 

 thereby the word for head was offered, when words for eye, ear, hair, 

 tongue, teeth, &c., were required. But Mr. Crummell assured me 

 that this source of error was carefully guarded against. We find the 

 analogues of this dental dissyllable in the list of words meaning head, 

 published in Vol. VII, page 151 of the Proceedings of this Society, 

 among the Indian languages of America, in e. x. the Naguiler <Pie, 

 the Chippewayan ed^le; among the European languages, in the 

 French tete, the Wallzau totao, the Caucasian diidi and adada, the 

 Siberian t^, Chinese teu, and Manchu iuhu. "We find the same form 

 meaning hair in the Vogul and Samoied words of/a, yta, yt, at, aetl, 

 and tue. It is remarkable how rarely this simple dental form occurs 

 in that list; and that the confounding of head and hair under this 

 form occurs in the same reofion. 



