Henry Hamilton Johnston

“ On the contrary, though there is a certain physical resemblance among those tribes who speak clearly-marked Bantu dialects (the Babangi of the upper Congo, the people of the Great Lakes, the Ova-herero, the Ba-tonga, Zulu-Kaffirs, Awemba and some of the East Coast tribes) , there is nevertheless a great diversity in outward appearance, shape of head and other physical characteristics, among the negroes who inhabit Bantu Africa. Some tribes speaking Bantu languages are dwarfs or dwarfish, and belong to the group of Forest Pygmies. Others betray relationship to the Hottentots ”

“ Some form of speech like Fula, Kiama (Tern) , or Kposo of northern Togoland, or one of the languages of the lower Niger or Benue, may have been taken up by ancient Libyan, Hamite or Nilotic conquerors and cast into the type which we now know as Bantu,—a division of sexless Negro speech, however, that shows no obvious traces of Hamitic (Caucasian) influence. We have no clue at present to the exact birth-place of the Bantu nor to the particular group of dialects or languages from which it sprang. ”

“ The exception alluded to may be a method of forming the preterite tense, which seems to be shared by a great number of widely-spread Bantu languages. This may be illustrated by the Zulu tanda, love, which changes to tandile, have loved, did love. This -ile or -ili may become in other forms -idi, didi, -ire, -ine, but is always referable back to some form like -ili or ile, which is probably connected with the root li or di (ndi or ni) , which means “to be” or “exist.” ”

“ The vowels of the Bantu languages are always of the Italian type, and no true Bantu language includes obscure sounds like ö and ü. Each word must end in a vowel (though in some modern dialects in Eastern Equatorial, West and South Africa the terminal vowel may be elided in rapid pronunciation, or be dropped, or absorbed in the terminal consonant, generally a nasal) . No two consonants can come together without an intervening vowel, except in the case of a nasal, labial or sibilant. [8] No consonant is doubled. ”

“ No sexual gender is recognized in the pronouns and concord. Sexual gender may be indicated by a male “prefix” of varying form, often identical with a word meaning “father,” while there is a feminine prefix, na or nya, connected with the root meaning “mother,” or a suffix ka or kazi, indicating “wife,” “female.” The 1st and 2nd prefixes invariably indicate living beings and are Usually restricted to humanity.
The sixteen original prefixes of the Bantu languages are given below in the most archaic forms to be found at the present day. ”

“ The Congo basin and the south-western watershed of the Nile at the time of the Bantu invasion would have been occupied on the Atlantic seaboard by West Coast negroes, and in the centre by negroes of a low type and by Forest Pygmies; the eastern coasts of Victoria Nyanza and the East African coast region down to opposite Zanzibar probably had a population partly Nilotic-negro and partly Hottentot-Bushman. From Lakes Tanganyika and Nyasa south-westwards to the Cape of Good Hope the population was Forest-negro, Nilotic-negro, Hottentot and Bushman. ”

“ These dialects are chiefly spoken in the regions west-north-west, and perhaps north and east of Tanganyika, from the vicinity of Lake Albert Edward on the north and the Lukuga outlet of Tanganyika on the south. On the west they are bounded by the Congo Forest and the Manyema genus (No. 13) . The languages on the east coast of Tanganyika (Ki-rundi, Kigeye, &c.) seem to be more nearly connected with those of group No. 1 (Uganda-Unyoro) , yet perhaps they are more conveniently included here. ”

“ In the delta of the Zambezi is to be found Ci-podzo, a very distinct language, yet one which belongs to the Nyanja genus. Ci-shangane, Chopi or Shi-lenge and other dialects of the Beira and Inhambane coast-lands and of Manika have been much influenced by Zulu dialects (Tebele and Ronga) .
(42) The well-marked Bechuana language group has very distinct features of its own. This includes all the Bantu dialects of the Bechuanaland protectorate west of the Guai river. Bechuana dialects (such as Ci-venda, Se-suto, Se-peli, Se-roloñ, Se-χlapi, &c.) ”

“ Although tanda is a common verb in Zulu, it has not in Zulu all these variations, and in some other language where it may by chance exhibit all the variations its own form is changed to londa or randa. ”

“ The Fula language would offer some grammatical resemblance if its suffixes were turned into prefixes (a change which has actually taken place in the reverse direction in the English language between its former Teutonic and its modern Romanized conditions; cf. “offset” and “set-off,” “upstanding” and “standing-up”) . ”

“ Mu- probably meant “one,” and Ma- a collective numeral of indefinite number, applied to liquids (especially water) , a tribe of men, a herd of beasts—anything in the mass. [14] In the corresponding particles of the concord as applied to adjectives, verbs and pronouns, sometimes the first syllable, Ñgu or Ñga was taken for the concord and sometimes the second mu or ma. This would account for the seemingly inexplicable lack of correspondence between the modern prefix and its accompanying particle, which so much puzzled Bleek and other early writers on the Bantu languages. ”

“ 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.)
↑ 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.” ”

“ The Manyema (Baenya) group includes most of the corrupt Bantu dialects between the western watershed of Tanganyika and the main stream of the Luapula-Congo, extending also still farther north, and comprising (seemingly) the languages of the Aruwimi basin, such as Yalulema, Soko, Lokele, Kusu, Tu-rumbu, &c. On the west the Manyema group is bounded by the languages of the Lomami valley, which belong to groups Nos. 15 and 16; on the east the Manyema genus merges into the much purer Bantu dialects of groups Nos. ”