SOUTHERN AFRICA. 
1 1 1 
ing together the skins of sheep for their winter garments Avith 
sinews or the intestines of animals, the Hottentots may be said 
to be entirely ignorant of arts and manufactures. Some in- 
vention however appears to have been exercised in the con- 
struction of their language, and particularly in its articula- 
tion. Of all the methods that have been adopted in lan- 
guage by different nations for the purpose of expressing ob- 
jects, and conveying ideas in a clear and unequivocal man- 
ner, none is more extraordinary than that which has been hit 
upon by the Hottentots. Almost all their monosyllables, and 
the leading syllable of compound words, are thrown out of 
the mouth with a sudden retraction of the tongue from the 
teeth or the palate against one of which it had been pressed, 
according to the signification of the word about to be uttered ; 
for the same sound, with the dental, will have a very differ- 
ent meaning with the palatial, retraction of the tongue. The 
noise made by the dental is exactly that which is sometimes 
used to express impatience or disappointment, but the pala- 
tial is much more full and sonorous, and not unlike the clack- 
ing of a hen that has young chickens. This sound is not an 
insulated movement preceding or following a syllable, but is 
thrown out at the same moment of time, and incorporated 
with it. All languages in their infancy consisted probably of 
simple or monosyllabic sounds : but as these, being few in 
number, could convey only a very limited number of ideas, 
recourse was had to inflexion of voice and composition of the 
simple sounds to make the vocabulary more copious. The 
division of such simple sounds into their elements, and by the 
various combinations of these elements to form an almost unli- 
mited number of new sounds, was one of the most wonderful 
