It was a simple task enough that we now set ourselves to do, just to make vocabularies of the various more or less barbarous idioms in use in the Niger districts. There were plenty to choose from, for there is more confusion of tongues, such as is described in the Bible, in these parts than anywhere else. There is a perfectly inexhaustible supply of peculiar phrases.
For instance, between Abo, in the highest part of the delta of the Niger, and the sea, as an officer of the Royal Niger Company told me, there are no less than seven dialects spoken, none of which have the very slightest affinity with each other. It would appear that one wave of migration has succeeded another, as the breakers do on the beach, the natives composing the different parties of emigrants dying out, or leaving only a few survivors stranded like islets in a flood in the tropical forests, retaining their original customs and dialects, and continuing to offer sacrifices in the old way, uninfluenced by the other native populations.
It has been different further inland, for the last emigrants have been absorbed by the earlier settlers, rather than driven back, but at the same time their characteristics have not been merged in those of other tribes, so that we still find side by side totally different customs, and people speaking different dialects quite unlike each other, such as the Tuareg, Fulah, Songhay, Bambara, Bozo, Mossi, etc., almost equally distributed over extensive districts.
So we all set to work. Father Hacquart and I buckled to at the Tuareg language. Pullo Khalifa turned out to be an indifferent teacher, though he was full of good-will. He was never at a loss for the signification of a word, but his renderings were mostly merely approximate. I have already dwelt upon the peculiarities of the Tuareg language in a previous chapter, so I will only add here that we had two other instructors in it, another Fulah, a Mahommedan, who shilly-shallied a good deal in his interpretations, and a female blacksmith of Bokar Wandieïdiu, now attached to the service of Ibrahim Galadio, who lent her to us. The last-named was certainly the most interesting of our linguistic professors. She had a tremendous voice, and was as ugly as sin, but she gave herself many airs and graces. With the aid of these three and a few others we drew up quite an imposing comparative vocabulary of the Tuareg language.
Father Hacquart also devoted some time to the study of Songhay, which is spoken between Say and Timbuktu, and also in other districts beyond those towns in the east and west, for we meet with it again at Jenné and at Aghades. Near Say, they call the Songhay language djermanké. Pretty well every one undertook to teach us Songhay; it was a simple dialect enough, spoken through the nose, and it was likely to be very useful to us. The Pères blancs of Timbuktu give especial attention to its study.
Tierno Abdulaye Dem, a few coolies, old Suleyman, who had deserted Amadu, tired of wandering about after him, and had rejoined us to go back to his beloved Foota, used to assemble every day in Baudry’s hut, which was transformed into a Fulah academy.
Most unexpected results ensued from these meetings. The Fulah language is a very charming one, and has been carefully studied by General Faidherbe and M. de Giraudon, but there is still a good deal to be learnt about it. It is very difficult to connect it with any other. It is the one language necessary for travelling or for trading between Saint Louis and Lake Tchad. There have been many theories on the subject of the Fulah migration, and a great deal of nonsense has been talked about it. Baudry, who studied the language with the greatest zeal, discovered some extraordinary grammatical rules in it and strange idioms, enough to frighten M. Brid’oison himself. No one could now utter two or three words at table without Baudry declaring how they could be translated into one Fulah expression. The following example will give an idea of how much could be expressed in a Fulah word. I must add, however, that Baudry and Tierno Abdulaye agree in saying it is very seldom used.
The word I allude to is Nannantundiritde, which signifies to pretend to go and ask mutually and reciprocally for news of each other.
Tierno Abdulaye, who was a Toucouleur from the Senegal districts, gave out that he could speak his maternal language or Fulah pretty perfectly. When, however, Baudry set to work to explain to him the formation of Fulah words which he claimed to have discovered, Tierno realized that after all he did not know much about it, so he tried to acquire grammatical Fulah, with the result that many of his fellow-countrymen could not understand what he said. They were completely confused by all these new rules, but Baudry was delighted at having won a disciple.
The people of Massina, or the districts near the great bend of the Niger, speak very quietly and in a low voice, as if they realized the beauty of their language, and do not trouble themselves very much about strict grammatical accuracy. The Fulah tongue, in fact, admits of an immense number of shades of expression, and though there is not perhaps exactly anything that can be called Fulah literature, except for a few songs which can only be obtained from the griots with the greatest difficulty, the language simply teems with proverbs. Here are a few examples, but of course, like all such sayings, they lose terribly in translation:—