OF LANGUAGES. 



75 



the forms of the nouns are distinguished, vary in their plurals, 

 and only tivo in their government, according as they apply to 

 persons or things ; with the exception of these two cases, the prefix 

 of the noun, without reference to number er gender, determines 

 the changes which must take place in its adjective, pronoun, or 

 verb. Thus the words indoda, man, intomhi, girl, and intaba, 

 mountain, although of different genders, have precisely the 

 same pronominal and tense form, and the same grammatical 

 government, simply because they have the same nominal prefix, 

 and consequently belong to the same species of nouns" 116 



And Dr. Bleek, with the sincerity which characterizes a true 

 scholar, himself admits as much. He says : 



" When we inquire into the probable etymologies of the 

 Hottentot derivative suffixes of nouns, not one of them seems 

 to have originally any meaning implying sex ; and the meanings 

 which the suffixes impart to nouns in which a difference of sex 

 is not discernible, is frequently of so decided a character as to 

 assign to these suffixes a distinct signification which could only 

 with great violence be deduced from any analogy with the 

 distinctions of sex. 117 



And further on he even suggests what we should call a 

 concrete process, for according to him : 



" It is highly probable that the whole relation of the Hot- 

 tentot classes of nouns to the distinction of sex, arose from the 

 circumstance that the nouns respestively indicating " man" and 

 " woman" had been formed with different derivative particles 



(116) Compare " The Zulu and other Dialects of Southern Africa" by Rev. 

 Lewis Grout. "The distinction of objects with regard to gender is scarcely 

 recognized in the grammar of this dialect. The changes which must be made 

 in the adjectives, pronouns or verbs, are all determined by the initial element 

 of the noun. A distinction is made however between persons and things in 

 the first and sixth classes, all nouns in urn which denote persons belonging to 



the first class, and those which denote things belonging to the sixth 



So strong is the influence of this inclination to concords produced by the 

 repetition of initials, that it controls the distinction of number and quite 

 subordinates that of gender, and tends to mould the pronoun after the 

 likeness of the initial element of the noun to which it refers ;" see : Journal 

 of the American Oriental Society, Vol. I, pages 403 and 424. 



(117) Compare Bleek " On the Concord," I.e., page lxxvi. 



