746 AlJOKlCilNAL I'l.ACl-: NAMES. 



click is, says Dr. Bleek, " u most unpronounceable click " — and 

 he does not even attenii)t to detine it. The variation of language 

 as between the tribes was even so great as to make it " individual 

 in its peculiarities." All this, therefore, is of great importance 

 when we come to the interjiretation of place-names occurring in 

 <lifferent areas of so extensive a Province as that of the Cape. 



Two words, for instance, both of which will come before us 

 later in connection with specific place-names, have diffC'rent 

 equivalents in different tribes. Tluis for " nose," Argousset 

 gives nuen. Bleek gives tu, liahn and Lichtenstein give 'nudu; 

 while for " lion," Arbousset gives Koet'i., Bleek gives l|ka, and 

 Lichtenstein kan. No doubt if other dialects had been ])rc- 

 served to us, still further variation could be established, for it 

 must never be forgotten that the acttial materials in the way of 

 Bushman literature are, most unfortunately, very meagre, and 

 by reason of their inaccessibility, little known. 



Into all the details of the question we cannot possibly enter 

 beyond those facts which establish our present contention con- 

 cerning the hopeless confusion caused by conflicting languages 

 and orthographies, coupled with the rank illiteracy of many of 

 the early pioneers on the one hand, and on the other, the isolation 

 in which able workers in contact with different tribes (and so 

 dialects) sought to fix liewildcring and Ijaffling clicks, vari- 

 ously pronounced according to locality and other influences. 



There was even, as a matter of fact,, a good deal of variation 

 in the pronunciation of the same click, and in consequence clicks 

 were frequently mistaken and mis written (cf. Jnxu instead of 

 Inqu, and Ngcele, Ngxele, instead of Ngqele. ), and in any case 

 the difficulties of pronunciation operated in the direction of 

 limiting their number. Most of the pioneers would not worry 

 with the language at all, and the missionaries felt that they were 

 doing well in confining their attention to the main clicks in the 

 great work of reducing the Hottentot and Bushman languages to 

 writing. 



The result was that attention came to be focussed upon the 

 retention of three clicks, namely the c, q, and x, of our modern 

 orthography. This, one might imagine, would be simple enough, 

 and yet to demonstrate the actual and practical difficulties of the 

 situation, so little realised by those who have not come in actual 

 contact with it, we draw attention to the variations, so far as 

 these three clicks are concerned. 



1. The Dcutal Click — c in modern si-Xosa and Zuhi ; (| in 

 se-Suto ; ^ of I.e Vaillant ; t" of Lichtenstein; — of .Schmelen : 

 • of Knudsen, I of Bleek. 



2. llic Cerebral Click — q in modern si-Xosa and Zulu; ' of 



Schmelen ;' of Knudsen ; > of Schreuder; -f- of the Rhenish 



Missionary Society ; ! of Bleek. 



X. The Faitcal Click — x in motlcrn si-Xosa and Zulu, \" of 

 Le Vaillant ; t" of Lichtenstein ; ' of Schmelen and Knudsen ; 



> of .Schreuder; || of Bleek. 



