-* The Languages of Liberia 



19. The TEMNE-BULOM. Occasionally in its word-roots 

 this group indicates an extremely distant affinity with Wolof, 

 Fula, and Mandingo, but it is widely separated from all this 

 group by its use of pronominal prefixes instead of suffixes. 

 Still, as already pointed out in the earlier part of this chapter, 

 this need not be the real cause of separation, since there may 

 have been an interchange of system between the employment 

 of suffixes and prefixes, while the principle of the " concord," 

 familiar also in Bantu, and a feature of the Temne and its allies, 

 also reappears in Fula. Pel haps this group may also be 

 stretched so as to contain the other languages of the West 

 African coast in Senegambia, such as Felup, Serer^ and Papel. 

 Amongst these, however, there is extraordinary dissimilarity 

 in vocabulary, though a general agreement in the principle of 

 changing nouns from singular to plural by an alteration in the 

 initial syllable. 1 



If the Gora language of Liberia is to be associated with 

 any group, it is probably nearest related to the Mandingo-Kru 

 section. Felup, Serer, and Papel amongst the western prefix- 

 using languages may be the isolated remains of one of the 

 oldest developments of African speech, stranded on the Atlantic 

 limits of the continent. Putting these aside, it is possible to 

 conceive of an extremely remote common origin for all the 

 other forms of Negro speech (except those languages related 

 to Hausa and Kanuri) between the districts west of the White 

 Nile (outside the limits of the Nilotic group) and the mouth 

 of the Senegal, including the hypothetical parent of the Bantu 



1 This division of nineteen groups still leaves in an isolated, unattached 

 condition several languages of the Central and Egyptian Sudan such as Buduma, 

 Mundu, Lendu, Manbettu, Momvu, and Makarka, though I have provisionally 

 classed the five last with Madi, a little because of geographical proximity. There 

 are also isolated languages in German East Africa and in all parts of West 

 and West Central Africa not yet classified. 



VOL. II 1105 38 



