OF T1IK YORUBA LANGUAGE. 



39 



12. The Yoruba language, "which is surprisingly rich in abstract terms,"* is of a very 

 early Turanian, or agglutinative type. To me it seems little less than miraculous, that a 

 barbarous people should have 1 so long retained in its entire speech, the clear traces of its 

 whole radical vocabulary, and with so little appearance of phonetic decay. 



13. "The primitive words of the Yoruba language, amounting in all to about five 

 hundred, consist of the following classes: 



"1. Personal and other pronouns. 



" 2. About one hundred and sixty verbs, several of which an; obsolete. 



"3. About two hundred, and fifty nouns, including several which are clearly exotics. 



"4. A few particles, as adverbs, prepositions, conjunctions, and interjections. 



"The remainder of the language, amounting to at least fifteen thousand vocables, has 

 been built up on this foundation, childly by prefixing personal pronouns to verbs to form 

 nouns, and by the union of nouns with verbs and prepositions. 



14. "Tin- primitive verbs are all monosyllables, and most of them are of the simplest 

 possible form, consisting of a, single consonant, simple or compound, and a vowel, either 

 pure or nasal. 



"A few monosyllabic verbs' begin with two consonants; as, mbe, to he; nla, to he large, 

 &c. These, however, are secondary forms. •. . . . 



" The verbs of two syllables arc; all either derivatives or exotics 



"Very few of the exotic words have come to the Yoruba people through tin 1 Arabic; 

 and it is remarkable that some words of undoubted Eastern origin are unknown among 

 the tribes further in the interior."f 



15. "There arc three primary tones, the middle, the acute, and the grave; as ba, to 

 melt; ba, with; and ba, to hend. The middle is the ordinary tone of the; voice without 

 inflection; the acute and grave tones are simply the rising and falling inflections of elocu- 

 tionists. In the Yoruba language, however, they are employed to distinguish words which 

 are spelled alike, but have different meanings. Thus, the two words obe, sauce, and obe, 

 a knife,X are quite different to the ear, when uttered with the proper tones. The tones, 

 though simple in theory, are difficult for us to seize, and require close attention. "§ 



16. In all the; particulars here enumerated, more especially in the monosyllabic character 

 and simple form of the primitive verbs, and in the peculiar intonation, there is so striking an 

 analogy to the genius of the Chinese language, that any additional evidence of affinity 

 between the two dialects, instead of awakening any surprise, might be readily received as 

 the fulfilment of a natural expectation. In one respect, the Yoruba is the simpler language, 

 for the only suffix that It admits for the vowel of any syllabic, is the guttural nasal i, while 



* Bowen, p. xx. 



;|; We also speak of a, sharp sauce, as well as of a sharp knife. 



f Ibid., pp. 10-11. 

 § Bowen, p. 5. 



