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THE BANTU IDIOMATIST IN THE FIELD OF 

 COMPARATIVE PHILOLOGY. 



Rev. Prof. W. A. Norton, M.A., B.Litt., 

 University of Capetown. 



Read Jul,/ 13, 1921. 



The study of Bantu philology is still so much in its infancy 

 that very few realise its immensely wide scope, its various divisions, 

 its manifold difficulties, its large tracts of uncertainty, and yet 

 its enormous importance to a galaxy of sciences and great prac- 

 tical value in our ever pressing problem. 



A man who attempts to cover the whole field of the family, 

 as Sir Harry Johnston, with undaunted courage, has done in his 

 vocabulary of some 300 Bantu languages, is often little spared by 

 the critic who has, or thinks he has, a good knowledge of one 

 dialect. But, on the other hand, the authority on a single 

 language is apt to get very bad falls when he ventures himself into 

 the wider sphere of comparative philology. 



A rather startling instance of this is seen in a distinguished 

 Zulu scholar (Rev. A. T. Bryant), who gives lists for comparison 

 of Zulu with Sanskrit, Arabic, Malay, and Papuan respectively. 

 It is true that in the last case he "would not like to aver, at the 

 present moment, that (the resemblance) is anything more than 

 chance," and here we will therefore omit to comment. 



Of the Malay words he suggests for comparison: — 



djabat with tabata, lapar with lamba, 



dankan ,, tenga, ikan ,, intlanzi, 



these might be (conceivably) worth the trouble of such comparison, 

 and ma-bap tends to appear for mother and father all the world 

 over, but imvula and hudjan, tshala and lam an puzzle one as to 

 why they are recorded. 



Now to take the Zulu-Arabic list ("not of course definitely 

 related," says our author, "but which may provide the compara- 

 tive philologist with a little concentrated matter for study" — as 

 therefore conceivably related) : one of the Zulu words given, imali, 

 is recognised by so reliable a scholar as Meinhof as being not 

 cognate with, but actually borrowed from, not the English money 

 as some Zuluists supposed, but the Arabic mal, property, which 

 appears also in Swahili. 



Kohlela, Kahh and our "cough" may be imitative, and 

 bomvu (red) may be conceivably related to the Arabic bamba; 

 ntsundu to sudd (black), kuhima to kellim, and inhomo to gamus 

 and gamed — I say conceivably, meaning no adhesion to the view. 

 In other cases, the Zuluist gives two Arabic forms, sufficiently 

 distinct to show at once the more than problematic nature of any 

 possible connection, e.g.: — 



