456 
THE KILIMA-NJAB 0 EXPEDITION. 
gender and collective in number, serving as plural to 
61, and sometimes preceding nouns of a collective 
character that have no singular. El most probably is 
a demonstrative pronoun of common gender, and the 
same as ele, be, she, it, this (plur. kulo, they, these). 
Both M and el drop their liquid consonant before 
the letter “ s ” beginning a word; as in Arabic, a 
double sound of that consonant is heard, as —ossesin 
i( zz ol-sessin, “ the body ”), ossoit ( — ol-soit, “the 
stone”), es-soit ( = el-soit), &c. 
The last of the three articles, en, assumes the forms 
e, es, en (sometimes eng), and em, according as it 
precedes nouns commencing with an n or m, an s, a 
vowel, or a labial; as— E-modi, “a pan,” or “pot;” 
e-nahga, “cloth;” es-siahgiki, “a wife;” en-oloh, or 
eh-golon the sun eh-guduk, “ the mouth;” em¬ 
ber e, “ the spear.” 
The article en is mainly feminine in its significance, 
but it also gives a diminutive, depreciatory, weakened, 
playful, or affectionate character to the word it pre¬ 
cedes. Thus en-ker is “ a female sheep ” (ol-ker, “ a 
ram”), eh-doinyo, “a hill” (ol-doinyo, “ a mountain”), 
em-barawui, “the Wa-kwavi, or agricultural Masai,” 
a contemptuous name used in the feminine sense by 
the nomad Masai to imply cowardice; en-gvjita, 
“tender grass” ( ol-gvjita, “strong, rough grass”), 
and so on. 
The article en (with its variants, e, eh, ehg, em, &c.) 
seems to be more immediately derived from ena, the 
feminine demonstrative pronoun answering to ele in the 
masculine, before described. It is possible that ena 
may be a compound of el, the common article, direc¬ 
tive, or demonstrative, and na the feminine particle— 
i.e. el-na , e-na, ena , en. Just as I already hinted 
