THE LANGUAGE OF EQUATORIAL AFRICA.
Great interest has been awakened in the geographical discoveries that have been made in Central Equatorial Africa during the last twenty-five years. This vast and newly-explored country is no doubt the choicest portion of the whole African continent. The inhabitants, with the exception of a few mixed tribes along its outer borders, all belong to one great family. A line starting from the Cameroon Mountains on the western coast, second degree north latitude, and drawn, with some slight variations, directly across the continent to the same degree of latitude on the east coast, divides the negro race into two distinct families, perhaps of nearly equal size. The one, occupying the country north of this line to the southern borders of the Great Desert, is known as the Nigritian stock, from the fact that they are to be found mainly in the valley of the Niger. The other, and the one to which our article mainly refers, is known as the Ethiopian or Nilotic family, from its supposed descent from the ancient Ethiopians, whose chief residence was the banks of the Nile.
One general language, with great divergence as to dialects, prevails over this whole region of country. There are not only verbal resemblances, but there is a peculiar grammatical structure, scarcely known to any other language, that pervades and characterizes all the dialects of this one great family. A very large number of words are common to the Mpongwe dialect on the west coast, and the Swahili on the east, as may be seen from a grammar of the Mpongwe, published by the missionaries at the Gaboon years ago. If the words used by three or four tribes along the coast of Southern Guinea could be fully collated, they would be found to contain not less, perhaps, than four-fifths of all the words used over the whole of this vast region.
But apart from these verbal resemblances, there are certain features of orthography that establish the relationship between these dialects quite as clearly. To mention no others, the use of m and n—as if they were preceded by a sort of half-vowel sound—before certain other consonants, at the beginning of words, is very peculiar. M is constantly used before b, p, t, and w, as in the words mbolo, mpolu, mtesa, and mwera. So n is constantly used before k, t, y, and gw, as in the words nkala, ntondo, nyassa, and ngwe. The combination of ny occurs in the names of most of the great lakes, as Nyassa, Nyanza, and Tanganyika. A still more striking feature of relationship between these dialects may be found in the combinations by which proper names are formed. The names of a large proportion of the tribes encountered by Stanley and Cameron on their journeys across the continent commence with the letter u, as Uganda, Unyoro, and Ujiji, &c. Now, by prefixing ma, and dropping the initial u, we have Maganda, a person or citizen of Uganda; Manyoro, a person or citizen of Unyoro. So by prefixing wa instead of ma, we get Waganda, they, or the people of Uganda. Now, in the Mpongwe dialect, ma is simply a contraction of oma, person, and wa or wao is the personal pronoun for they, showing how these proper names are formed. Again, many of the names of these tribes terminate in ana. Ana, in the Mpongwe dialect, is an abbreviation of awana, children or descendants. If the names of Bechuana and Wangana could be analyzed, they would be found to mean the children or descendants of Bechu or Wanga, this being the way of giving names to any particular family that separates itself from the parent stock.
But the peculiar character of this language is more remarkable than its wide diffusion. Taking the Mpongwe dialect as a specimen, we have no hesitation in saying that it will be difficult to find any language, ancient or modern, that is more systematic or philosophical in its general arrangements, more marked in the classification of its different parts of speech or their relationship to each other, or in the extent of its inflections, especially those of the verb. The existence of such a language among an uncultivated people is simply a marvel. As many as three hundred oblique forms can be derived from the root of every regular Mpongwe verb, each one of which will have a clear and distinct shade of meaning of its own, and yet so regular and systematic in all its inflections, that a practiced philologist could, after a few hours’ study, trace up any of even its most remote forms to the original root. It is not intended to convey the idea that all these forms are habitually used, for that would indicate a much more extended vocabulary than could reasonably be expected among an uncultivated people. But there is no form of the verb, notwithstanding its extensive ramifications, that would not be distinctly understood by an audience, even if they had never heard it used before.
It will be seen, therefore, that the vocabulary may be expanded to an almost unlimited extent. It is not only expansible, but it has a wonderful capacity for conveying new ideas. The missionaries laboring among these people, after they had acquired a thorough knowledge of the structure of this wonderful language, were surprised to find with how much ease they could use it to convey religious ideas. In their native state the people had no knowledge of the Christian religion, and, of course, used no terms for saviour or salvation, for redeemer or redemption, etc. They had, however, the terms sunga, to save, and danduna, to redeem, or pay a ransom. Now, according to a well established law of grammar, ozunge is a saviour, and isungina is salvation; similarly from danduna comes olandune, the redeemer, and ilanduna, redemption:—so that they could at once get a tolerably correct idea of these terms, and there was no need (as there is in most unwritten languages) to call in the aid of foreign words. Without multiplying illustrations of a similar character, it will be seen that the language is not only flexible and expansive to a very remarkable degree, but is suitable beyond almost any other known language to convey religious instruction to the minds of the people. It has been preserved, no doubt, by a wise Providence for this very purpose.
The providence of God towards this great family, therefore, seems to be very marked and significant. They have been preserved for centuries in great numbers and vigorous manhood, notwithstanding their perpetual intestine strifes and the cruel desolations that have been occasioned by the slave trade, along both their eastern and western borders. They are in possession of a country that is not only healthful and productive, but whose navigable streams seem to have been traced out by the finger of Divine Providence for the twofold purpose of facilitating intercommunication among the people themselves, and of furthering the rapid diffusion of the Gospel wherever it has once gained a footing. Then their language, with all its wonderful characteristics, seems to have been kept by the Divine hand as an easy channel through which the light and blessings of the Gospel might, in God’s own good time, reach their dark and benighted minds.
J. Leighton Wilson, in The Catholic Presbyterian.