Bibliography.—A Comparative Grammar of South African Languages (in two parts, left unfinished), by Dr W. I. Bleek (London, 1869); A Sketch of the Modern Languages of Africa, by R. N. Cust (1882); Comparative Grammar of the South African Bantu Languages, by Father J. Torrend (1894; mainly composed on a study of the languages of the Central Zambezi, interesting, but erroneous in some deductions, and incomplete). In Sir H. H. Johnston's The Kilimanjaro Expedition (1884), British Central Africa (1898), and The Uganda Protectorate (1902-1904), there are illustrative vocabularies; and in George Grenfell and the Congo (1908) the Congo groups of Bantu speech are carefully classified, also the Fernandian and Cameroon. In the numerous essays of Carl Meinhof on the original structure of the Bantu mother-speech, and on existing languages in East and South-East Africa, in the Mittheilungen des Seminärs für Orientalische Sprachen, Berlin (also issued separately through Brockhaus, Leipzig, 1899), and also in his Grundzüge einer vergleichenden Grammatik der Bantusprachen (Berlin, 1906), a vast amount of valuable information has been collected, but Meinhof's deductions therefrom are not in every case in accord with those of other authorities. The Swahili-English Dictionary, by Dr L. Krapf (London, 1882), contains a mass of not well-sorted but invaluable information concerning the Swahili language as spoken on the coast of East Africa, especially regarding many words now becoming obsolete. A similar mine of information is to be found in An Encyclopaedic Dictionary of the Manañja (Mang'anja) Language of British Central Africa, by the Rev. D. C. Scott (1891). Other admirable works are the Dictionary of the Congo Language, by the Rev. Holman Bentley (1891), and The Folklore of Angola, and a Grammar of Kimbundu, by Dr. Heli Chatelain. The many handbooks and vocabularies written and published by Bishop Steere on the languages of the East African coast-lands are of great importance to the student, especially as they give forms of the prefixes now passing out of use. The Introductory Handbook of the Yao Language, by the Rev. Alexander Hetherwick, illustrates very fully that peculiar and important member of the East African group. Vocabularies of various Congo languages have been compiled by Dr. A. Sims; more important works on this subject have been published by the Rev. W. H. Stapleton (Comparative Handbook of Congo Languages), and by Rev. John Whitehead (Grammar and Dictionary of the Bobangi Language (London, 1899). E. Torday has illustrated the languages of the Western Congo basin (Kwango, Kwilu, northern Kasai) in the Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute. There is a treatise on the Lunda language of the southwestern part of the Belgian Congo, in Portuguese, by Henrique de Carvalho, who also in his Ethnographia da Expedicaõ portugueza
ao Muata Yanvo goes deeply into Bantu language questions. The Duala language of Cameroon, has been illustrated by the Baptist missionary Saker in his works published about 1860, and since 1900 by German missionaries and explorers (such as Schuler). The German work on the Duala language is mostly published in the Mittheilungen des Seminärs für Orientalische Sprachen (Berlin); see also Schuler's Grammatik des Duala. The Rev. S. Koelle, in his Polyglotta Africana, published in 1851, gave a good many interesting vocabularies of the almost unknown north-west Bantu borderland, as well as of other forms of Bantu speech of the Congo coast and Congo basin. J. T. Last, in his Polyglotta Africana Orientalis, has illustrated briefly many of the East African dialects and languages, some otherwise touched by no one else. He has also published an excellent grammar of the Kaguru language of the East African highlands (Usagara). The fullest information is now extant regarding the languages of Uganda and Unyoro, in works by the missionaries of the Church Missionary Society (Pilkington, Blackledge, Hattersley, Henry Duta and others). Mr Crabtree, of the same mission, has collected information regarding the Masaba dialects of Elgon, and these have also been illustrated by Mr C. W. Hobley, and by Sir H. H. Johnston (Uganda Protectorate), and privately by Mr S. A. Northcote. Mr A. C. Madan has published works on the Swahili language and on the little-known Senga of Central Zambezia and Wisa of North-East Rhodesia (Oxford University Press). Jacottet (Paris, 1902) has in his Grammaire Subiya provided an admirable study of the Subiya and Luyi languages of Barotseland, and in 1907, Edwin W. Smith (Oxford University Press) brought out a Handbook of the Ila Language (Mashukulumbwe). The Rev. W. Govan Robertson is the author of a complete study of the Bemba language. Mrs Sydney Hinde has illustrated the dialects of Kikuyu and Kamba. F. Van der Burgt has published a Dictionary of Kirundi (the language spoken at the north end of Tanganyika). Oci-herero of Damaraland has chiefly been illustrated by German writers, old and new; such as Dr Kolbe and Dr P. H. Brincker. The northern languages of this Herero group have been studied by members of the American Mission at Bailundu under the name of Umbundu. Some information on the languages of the south-western part of the Congo basin and those of south-eastern Angola may be found in the works of Capello and Ivens and of Henrique de Carvalho and Commander V. L. Cameron. The British, French and German missionaries have published many dictionaries and grammars of the different Secuana dialects, notable amongst which is John Brown's Dictionary of Secuana and Meinhof's Study of the Tši-venda. The grammars and dictionaries of Zulu-Kaffir are almost too numerous to catalogue. Among the best are Maclaren's Kafir Grammar and Roberts' Zulu Dictionary. The works of Boyce, Appleyard and Bishop Colenso should also be consulted. Miss A. Werner has written important studies on the Zulu click-words and other grammatical essays and vocabularies of the Bantu languages in the Journal of the African Society between 1902 and 1906. The Tebele dialect of Zulu has been well illustrated by W. A. Elliott in his Dictionary of the Tebele and Shuna languages (London, 1897). The Ronga (Tonga, Si-gwamba, Hlengwe, &c.) are dealt with in the Grammaire Ronga (Lausanne, 1896) of Henri Junod. Bishop Smyth and John Mathews have published a vocabulary and short grammar of the Xilenge (Shilenge) language of Inhambane (S.P.C.R., 1902). The journal Anthropos (Vienna) should also be consulted.
(H. H. J.)
[1] Bantu (literally Ba-ntu) is the most archaic and most widely spread term for "men," "mankind," "people," in these languages. It also indicates aptly the leading feature of this group of tongues, which is the governing of the unchangeable root by prefixes. The syllable -ntu is nowhere found now standing alone, but it originally meant "object," or possibly "person." It is also occasionally used as a relative pronoun—"that," "that which," "he who." Combined with different prefixes it has different meanings. Thus (in the purer forms of Bantu languages) muntu means "a man," bantu means "men," kintu means "a thing," bintu "things," kantu means "a little thing," tuntu "little things," and so on. This term Bantu has been often criticized, but no one has supplied a better, simpler designation for this section of Negro languages, and the name has now been definitely consecrated by usage.
[2] In Luganda and other languages of Uganda and the Victoria Nyanza, and also in Runyoro on the Victoria Nile, the word for "fowl" is enkoko. In Ki-Swahili of Zanzibar it is kuku. In Zulu it is inkuku. In some of the Cameroon languages it is lokoko, ngoko, ngok, and on the Congo it is nkogo, nsusu. On the Zambezi it is nkuku; so also throughout the tribes of Lakes Nyasa and Tanganyika, and most dialects of South Africa.
[3] From this statement are excepted those tongues classified as "semi-Bantu." In some languages of the Lower Niger and of the Gold Coast the word for "fowl" is generally traceable to a root kuba. This form kuba also enters the Cameroon region, where it exists alongside of -koko. Kuba may have arisen independently, or have been derived from the Bantu kuku.
[4] Whence the many nyanza, nyanja, nyasa, mwanza, of African geography.
[5] In using the forms Uganda, Unyoro, the writer accepts the popular mis-spelling. These countries should be called Buganda and Bunyoro, and their languages Luganda and Runyoro.
[6] It is an important and recently discovered fact (delineated in the work of the Baptist missionaries and of the Austrian traveller Dr. Franz Thonner) that the Congo at its northern and north-eastern bend, between the Rubi river and Stanley Falls, lies outside the Bantu field. The Bondonga and Wamanga languages are not Bantu. They are allied to the Mbuba-Momfu of the Ituri and Nepoko, and also to the Mundu of the Egyptian Sudan. The Mundu group extends westward to the Ubangi river, as far south as 3° 30′ N. See George Grenfell and the Congo, by Sir Harry Johnston; and Dans la Grande Forêt de l'Afrique équatoriale, by Franz Thonner (1899).
[7] These features are characteristic of almost all the Negro languages of Africa.