SOUNDS OF MONKEY SPEECH 19 



monkeys, and, incidentally, a few sounds of a great num- 

 ber of other species. 



It is quite impossible to represent the sounds of monkey 

 speech by any literal formula, and it is difficult to translate 

 them into their exact equivalent of human speech ; but, in 

 order to convey some idea of the nature and scope of that 

 speech, I shall describe a word or two. In the tongue 

 of the brown Capuchin monkey the most important word 

 somewhat resembles the word "who," uttered like 

 "wh-oo-w." The phonetic effect is rich and musical. 

 The vowel element which dominates it is a pure vocal 

 "u." The radical meaning of this sound is food, which 

 is the central thought of every monkey's life. It does not 

 only mean food in the concrete sense, referring to the 

 thing to be eaten, but it sometimes refers to the act of 

 eating, in which sense it has the character of a verb. At 

 other times it refers to the desire to eat or to the sensa- 

 tion of hunger, in which instance it may be said to have 

 the character of an adjective. But grammatical values 

 depend upon structure, and since the speech of monkeys 

 is monopJwastic it cannot truly be said to have grammatical 

 form. All the sounds of this species, so far as I have 

 seen, are monosyllables ; and most of them contain but 

 one distinct phonetic. I have therefore described them 

 as "monophonetic." The word above described is some- 

 times used with the apparent purpose of expressing friend- 

 ship, or something of that kind. 



Another word which refers to drink, or liquid, begins 

 with a faint guttural "ch," gliding through a sound 

 resembling the French diphthong " eu," and ending with 



