Essay towards a Grammar of the Berber Language. 167 



Since in Berber, as in many rude languages, (indeed in the Turkish,) 

 there is no conjunction And, it is natural to use With, to supply the wani. 

 In some cases, it is hard to know whether Ec means " with," or indicates 

 apposition. Thus it says of Zacharias, Luke i. 64.— 



Ilda y'lm-es ag-Biramt-es, eh yils-es. 

 Opened bis-mouth at-its-instant, with his-tongue. 



Tn apposition again, thus : (i. 32 :) Mandjar Dahda, ec bhbas ; the seat of 

 David, his father. 



Finally, in some cases eh seems confounded with a genitive ; i. 68 :— 

 Ael-^alid el- Rabbi el Israel. 



Blessed (is) the Lord God o/ Israel. 

 ^fili means Good, in the widest sense ; (as in vi. 45, ergaz el ^hli, the 

 good man,) and hence, Happy, Blessed. The A prefixed to el ^ali indi- 

 cates the word to be a predicate ; the final is, by all analogy, a feminine 

 termination, which Elizabeth rightly applied to Mary, (i. 42,) and which is 

 as rightly omitted when Luke calls Theophilus excellent. This is also 

 omitted in the general addresses of vi. 21, 22. Probably £M0 is here an 

 abstract noun. Blessedness. 



Possibly el Israel may be interpreted apud Israelem, but the sense re- 

 quired is that of a mere genitive. So Ecsan for Ensan, Of them. 



The Berbers appear freely to use the singular of nouns, where the sense 

 requires a plural ; as YiivaQ agdamdint, una ex urbe, for, una ex urbibus. 

 But the regular plural is in an: — 



Ergaz, man ; fVergazan, men. 



Baba, father ; Baban, fathers. ' 



Os, day ; Ossan, days. 



on, heart ; Olawan, hearts. 



^yyor, month ; Ayyoran, months. 

 Most of the feminine plurals, that we have remarked, end in in, dropping 

 their final 0. Arabic nouns ordinarily take their Arabic plurals ; and pro- 

 bably many Berber nouns have irregular plurals. It will be observed that 

 nouns beginning with a vowel superadd W, almost ad libitum. Sometimes 

 also those beginning with a consonant j as Xam, or IVaxxam, a house j 

 and Iw, initial, for the dative. 



We may now proceed to exhibit that important part of a language, the 

 personal and other pronouns. 



WETTaXrai o' avri fiot Ktap, 

 Tovli k\v ov a av oIktov. 

 also: — Z^pipov, iv ovpav(f> 



KaWiar ov KtXadevfi a. 

 Indeed, it is well established even in prose writers. 



