454 
THE KILIMA NJARO EXPEDITION. 
The personal pronouns precede the verb. The pos¬ 
sessive pronouns follow the noun. The demonstra¬ 
tive pronouns may either be placed before or after the 
substantive. The interrogative pronoun precedes the 
verb, so also does the relative particle, and tire inter¬ 
rogative particle precedes the noun. 
The stem or root of the verb remains unaltered, 
but the tenses and modifications of the sense (such as 
a passive, a reciprocal, a causative meaning, &c.) are 
formed by adding both prefixes and suffixes. Many of 
these are traceable to abbreviated forms of indepeudent 
verbs. 
The negative particle is always prefixed to the verb. 
It is generally expressed by the particle me (m- before a 
vowel); but in certain tenses negation is indicated by the 
use of a separate prefix formed from an auxiliary verb. 
The prepositions in Masai, as their name indicates, 
precede the word they govern. The only postpositions 
are certain enclitic adverbs. 
The accent in Masai falls occasionally (especially in 
derivatives) on the first syllable of tlie word (generally 
the root), most frequently on tbe penultimate, and 
rarely on the last. 
Having briefly noted the leading characteristics of 
the language, I will now proceed to examine its im¬ 
portant features in a somewhat more detailed manner. 
As regards the phonology of Masai it may be re¬ 
marked that the vowels have mostly their Italian value. 
There are no obscure or modified sounds, and in this 
the Masai language resembles most of the Bantu forms 
of speech, wherein, also, there are no vowels that are 
not clearly and distinctly sounded as in Italian. In 
Masai words may end in a consonant (unlike the 
opposite rule in Bantu), but two consonants never 
