LANGUAGES 
487 
chi ) is kh (ch in “loch”); and q stands for the Arabic guttural k , “ kof,” Jj. 
Whenever h is seen it is to be pronounced as an English aspirate. Thus : 
Katha would be pronounced kat-ha, not katha as in “Katharine”; bakha 
would be bak-ha , not baya; and so on. 
Vowels are pronounced as in Italian, with ii, b as in German. O is like 
“ o ” in “ not ”; 0 like “ o ” in “ store.” The Greek to stands for the diphthongal 
sound of “o” in “bone.” The diphthong ei must be carefully and logically 
pronounced like ey in “grey”; not like ey in “eye,” 1 as it is a conjunction 
of e (ay) and i (ee). 
The numbers placed against words in the vocabularies indicate the original 
classes of the Bantu mother-language to which the nouns belong and correspond 
with the numbers attached to my foregoing table of the classes. Thus “9 and 10” 
attached to a word mean that it belongs in that form to both the ninth and tenth 
classes, the prefixial distinction being lost but the class of the noun being still 
preserved in the other syntaxial particles. 2 Often after a noun the word “ two ” 
or “ many ” will be placed as the explanation of an accompanying native word. 
This is to show the form of the plural adjectival particle or prefix. Of course 
your negro informant would simply gape if you asked, “ Now tell me the plural 
adjectival prefix of the fourth class ” ; but if you put it this way, “ How do you 
say ‘ Two Trees ’ ? ” he will at once reply : “ Miti gibili ” = “ Trees two,” and you 
at once put down delightedly “ gi ” as the adjectival particle belonging to nouns 
of the fourth class or “ Mi prefix. In like manner the sentences at the end are 
not the senseless rubbish they seem, but are intended to disclose the structure of 
the language. 
1 English people with their dull hearing and want of knowledge will pronounce the name of the 
Portuguese town of Beira, “Byra,” instead of Bayra. 
2 For instance : in Ki-swahili, nyumba (class 9) is “a house’’ ; nyumba (class 10) is “houses.” But 
Nyiunba hi/ is “this house,” and Nyumba his/ is “these houses” : showing that the prefix zi- has been 
lost in the noun. 
