THE BEOHUANA LANGUAGE. R5 



r.nd Labors in South Africa/' was busily engaged in carry- 

 ing through the press, with which his station is furnished, 

 the Bible in the language of the Bechuanas, which is called 

 Sicbuana. This has been a work of immense labor; and 

 as ho was the first to reduce their speech to a written form, 

 and has had his attention directed to the study for at least 

 thirty years, he may be supposed to be better adapted for 

 the task than any man living. Some idea of the copious- 

 ness of the language may be formed from the fact that 

 even he never spends a week at his work without discover- 

 ing new words; the phenomenon, therefore, of any man 

 who, after a few months' or years' study of a native tongue, 

 cackles forth a torrent of vocables, may well be wondered 

 at, if it is meant to convey instruction. In my own case, 

 though I have had as much intercourse with the purest 

 :'diom as most Englishmen, and have studied the language 

 carefully, yet I can never utter an important statement 

 without doing so very slowly, and repeating it too, lest the 

 foreign accent, which is distinctly perceptible in all Euro- 

 peans, should render the sense unintelligible. In this I 

 follow the example of the Bechuana orators, who, on im- 

 portant matters, always speak slowly, deliberately, and 

 with reiteration. The capabilities of this language may 

 be inferred from the fact that the Pentateuch is fully ex- 

 pressed in Mr. Moffat's translation in fewer words than in 

 the Greek Septuagint, and in a very considerably smaller 

 number than in our own English version. The language 

 is, however, so simple in its construction, that its copious- 

 ness by no means requires the explanation that the people 

 have fallen from a former state of civilization and culture. 

 The fact of the complete translation of the Bible at a 

 station seven hundred miles inland from the Cape naturally 

 suggests the question whether it is likely to be permanently 

 useful, and whether Christianity, as planted by modern 

 missions, is likely to retain its vitality without constant 

 supplies of foreign teaching. It would certainly be no 

 cause for congratulation if the Bechuana Bible seemed at 



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