STUDY OV NATIVE I'HILOUXiV AND ETHNOLOGY. I99 



they were not right. The Navy gives a bonus for 

 languages, and the Indian Civil Service encouraged 

 these studies; why not South Africa? 



In the way of language teaching we need— 



(a) Advanced lectures, stating problems and needs, and 



summarising results ; these for the learned and for the 

 scientific guidance of legislators and administrators. 

 These would not touch party politics, for that would 

 spoil the essentially unbiassed search for truth, which 

 should characterize academic work, but would never- 

 theless help legislators as agricultural science helps 

 farmers.* 



(b) Popular lectures and University extension lectures, cal- 



culated to enlighten public opinion about native 

 matters, like Meinhof's lectures at the Kolonial Institut 

 of Hamburg, 

 (f) Teaching of students of two sorts — (i) those wishing 

 to study this branch of philology, either for its great 

 assistance to general philology, or for the light it 

 throws on South African problems. f This will gradu- 

 ally raise up a South African school of the philology of 

 her peoples of the lower culture, still living and grow- 

 ing; (ii) those wishing to learn individual native 

 languages, e.g., administrators, doctors, missionaries, 

 students of native lore and custom (now greatly on 

 the increase), traders, and others. 



I heard the other day of a railway constructor who could find 

 no one to guide him to the tongues of his boys at railhead. 



For this purpose we need to have a few selected specimens 

 of native tribes, and instruments to phonograph their speech and 

 singing, i.e.^ a phonetic laboratory, as again at Hamburg. One 

 who knows the native would not find this expensive ; they would 

 be his houseboys, glad to speak their languages for the behoof 

 of his pupils rather than do house-work ; natives not educated 

 are better usually for this work. Teaching should be given by 

 means of the living voice of these natives, but only a comparative 

 phonetic student of Bantu can successfully teach thus.lj: Cape- 

 town, with its port and docks and location, is a very good centre 

 for this work, and might become, for philological purposes at 

 least, a Hamburg of South Africa. The Government and mis- 



* Governments which have no time nor money for ethnological 

 research, should have lived in the day when farmers never dreamed that 

 chemical research could affect them. 



t E.g., philology reveals much about the fauna and flora of early 

 Africa. 



X While the teaching of languages is being revolutionized in Europe 

 by the use of phonetic method, it is deeply disappointing to be greeted by 

 some missionary to-day with the Suto greeting (for example) pronounced 

 " Dumeyla moreyna," whereas anyone with a careful ear can discover 

 that the " e's " of " Lumela Morena " are broad. How we should laugh at 

 a man who said :" Let me tail you something: there is a lion roe-ring in 

 the back yard." Yet we expect our poor natives to undersjand our con- 

 tinual and worse nn'stakes. 



