78 THE BECHUANA LANGUAGE. Chap. VI. 



missionaries. The Sichuana vocabulary is extraordinarily 

 copious. Mr. Moffat never spends a week at his work without 

 discovering new words. Yet a person who acted as interpreter 

 to Sir George Cathcart told him that the language of the 

 Basutos was not capable of expressing the substance of a 

 chief's diplomatic paper, though the chief who sent it could 

 have worded it again off-hand in three or four different ways. 

 The interpreter could scarcely have done as much in English. 

 The Sichuana is, however, so simple in its construction, that 

 its copiousness by no means requires the explanation that the 

 people have fallen from a former state of civilization. Lan- 

 guage seems to be an attribute of the human mind. Since 

 the vocabulary is so extensive, the phenomenon of any man 

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

 cackles forth a torrent of words, may well be wondered at. 

 Though I have had as much intercourse with the purest idiom 

 as most Englishmen, I am always obliged to utter an im- 

 nortant statement very slowly, and repeat it afterwards, lest 

 the foreign accent, distinctly perceptible in all Europeans, 

 should render the same unintelligible. In this I follow the 

 example of the Bechuana orators, who, on matters of moment, 

 always speak deliberately, and with reiteration. Both rich 

 and poor talk their language correctly ; there is no vulgar 

 style. Children have a patois of their own, and use many 

 words in their play which men would scorn to employ. The 

 Bamapela have adopted a click into their dialect, and a large 

 infusion of the ringing n, which seems to have been intro- 

 duced for the purpose of preventing others from understanding 

 them. 



It would be no cause for congratulation if the Bechuana 

 Bible was likely to meet the fate of Elliot's Choctaw version, 

 in which we have God's word in a language which no tongue 

 can articulate, and no mortal can understand. A better 

 destiny seems in store for Mr. Moffat's labours, for the Sichu- 

 ana has been introduced into the new country beyond Lake 

 Ngami, where it is the court language, and will carry a 

 stranger through a district larger than France. The Bechuanas 

 in addition probably possess that imperishable property which 

 forms so remarkable a feature in the entire African race. 



VY'her. converts are made from heathenism it becomes an 



