Liberia <•' 



that a division of nouns — masculine, feminine, and neuter — 

 (similar to what obtains in Masai) is characteristic of the 

 Hottentot language, a form of speech which several writers 

 have thought might have been created somewhere in East Africa 

 or Somaliland by the early impact of Hamites on a people of 

 Bushman stock, already partially hybridised with the Nilotic 

 Negroes. The Mandingo group in its numerals exhibits another 

 interesting feature. Half its dialects have tamu, tarn, tan as the 

 word for "ten " and the other half /«, pu, pugo, or some variant 

 oi pu-. This recalls the similar feature in the Nilotic Negro or 

 even the Western Hamitic languages of the two rival roots for 

 " ten " — tarn- and pa-, par-, or puto. 



It is rather remarkable that in the Fula language there 

 should be absolutely no trace whatever of Caucasian influence, 

 such as is so marked in that of the far more Negroid race of the 

 Hausa or of the numerous branches of the Nile Negroes already 

 referred to ; for the Fula, as already stated, in physical 

 appearance are almost more a Caucasian than a Negro people. 

 Yet their language is fundamentally a Negro tongue, with 

 literally no more trace of original Caucasian influence than 

 the quite recent interpolation of words derived from Arabic 

 and connected with the Muhammadan religion. An analogous 

 influence to this is that remarkable Gala aristocracy of 

 Eastern Equatorial Africa to be found still living amongst a 

 purely Negro Bantu population. This aristocracy never speaks 

 anything but the purest forms of the Bantu dialects, and these 

 last are just as much Negro types of speech as are the languages 

 of West Africa. It might be said, however, that the Bantu 

 language family came into existence somewhere in the Nile 

 Basin by the influence of some Hamitic invasion which accepted 

 the language of the conquered Negroes though it cast it into 

 anew mould, impregnated with some Hamitic ideas of grammar. 



1098 



