Dèspues al cabo le pegan la parte junta. Ha que quiere dezir agua, porque la haché tiene a, h, antes de si la ponen ellos al principio con a, y al cabo desta manera:—
Tambien lo escriben a partes, pero de la una y otra manera, yo no pusiera aqui ni trétara dello sino por dar cuenta entera de las cosas desta gente. Ma in kati quiere decir no quiero, ellos lo escriben a partes desta manera:—
This is all on the subject the bishop vouchsafes us. Let us now attempt a free translation of his words, premising that they are so obscure in parts, and the composition so careless and provincial, that we shall not take it at all amiss if any reader thinks he can improve our rendering:
"Of their letters, I shall place here an A, B, C, their clumsiness not allowing more; for they employ one character for all the aspirations of the letters, and another to denote their repetitions, and so they go on in infinitum, as one may see in the following example: Le means a lasso and to hunt with one. In order to write with their characters, although we told them it contains but two letters, they make use of three, giving to the aspiration of the l the vowel é, which is before it, and in this they are not in error, if they wish to write it in their curious manner. Example:
e l e lé
Afterwards they put at the end the part which is joined. Again in ha, which means water, because the letter h contains the sounds a, h, they place the a both at the beginning and at the end, in this manner:—
a h a
They can write it either with separate letters or united together. I would not have inserted nor have mentioned this but that I wished to give a complete description of this people. Ma in kati means I do not wish; they write it in separate letters in this way:—