CHAP. XV 11 THE SUAHILI LANGUAGE 341 



To take a longer case, " My good child must have food " is 



Mtoto niema mangti mana jocula. 

 Conversion into the plural changes it to 



Watoto wema waiigu wana jocula. 



This concord, though it makes the grammar rather difficult, renders 

 the language musical by its adoption of "apt alliteration's artful aid." 

 This is also increased owing to every word ending in a vowel, a rule 

 which is even applied to words of foreign origin ; so that a " man-of-war " 

 becomes manowari, and a " gin " j'tnt. 



A third feature in the language strange to a European is the method 

 of agglutination or combination of several words into one, so that a 

 sentence is sometimes converted into a single word, as in the Suahili 

 riddle, Hausuiiiki, hausimami. A more instructive case is such a 

 compound as Nttakipofaje, meaning " how shall I get it," which is 

 constituted as follows : — • 



Ni- ta- ki- pata- je. 



sign of 

 I future it get how. 



tense 



The pronominal inflections, concord, and agglutination shows that 

 Ki-suahili is a language that has undergone many changes, but it is of 

 interest to note that it still shows many traces of a primitive condition. 

 Thus it is essentially a spoken language, for although it has long been 

 written in Arabic characters, this has not affected its structure. Hence 

 there are no degrees of comparison, for these can be expressed by 

 modulations of the voice. Thus vihali means " far " • but mbdh\ pro- 

 nounced slowly, with a strong emphasis on the middle syllable, implies 

 " very far " ; if, again, it be spoken in a high-pitched voice, it means 

 "a very great distance away." Similarly msuri, when applied to food, 

 means " nice " ; visTiri is " very nice " ; and if the word be said with a 

 smack of the lips and a rolling of the tongue it means " delicious." 



The language in this respect is poor, as it is also in terms ; but in 

 some cases it is richer than English. Thus it has three words for 

 " handful " — kofizi, the amount that can be grasped in the hand ; nk2{fi, 

 that which will rest on one ; and chopa, that which will lie on both hands 

 together. The precision in the use of these terms is, however, only a 

 result of the crudeness of the native system of weights and measures. 



The abundance of imitative words is also a primitive character. 

 Thus " fly " is ntzi., the sound of which is a suggestion of its buzz ; kuhi 

 is "fowl," and tufii-tufu is "boiling." Kiboko, the hippopotamus, reminds 

 one of the short, deep grunt of this animal, just as paa does of the 

 bleat of the small antelope, of which it is the native name. Uma (to 

 ache), -anana (gentle), and -ororo (soft), are less obvious illustrations of 

 the same type. 



The frequent reduplication of words in order to emphasise their 

 meaning or to express the plural is another primitive feature, which in 

 English is preserved only in such survivals as//, for "pages," and the 



