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Sudanese and Bantu Linguistic Areas.

There is one point in which the Bantu somewhat unaccountably compare favourably with the Sudanese. In all other regions the spread of culture has tended to bring about linguistic unity, as we see in the Hellenic world, where all the old idioms were gradually absorbed in the "common dialect" of the Byzantine empire, again in the Roman empire, where Latin became the universal speech of the West, and lastly in the Muhammadan countries, where most of the local tongues have nearly everywhere, except in Sudan, disappeared before the Arabic, Persian, and Turkish languages.

But in Negroland the case is reversed, and here the less cultured Bantu populations all, without any known exception, speak dialects of a single mother-tongue, while the greatest linguistic confusion prevails amongst the semi-civilised as well as the savage peoples of Sudan.

Although the Bantu language may, as some suppose[139], have originated in the north and spread southwards to the Congo, Zambesi, and Limpopo basins, it cannot now be even remotely affiliated to any one of the numerous distinct forms of speech current in the Sudanese domain. Hence to allow time for its diffusion over half the continent, the initial movement must be assigned to an extremely remote epoch, and a corresponding period of great duration must be postulated for the profound linguistic disintegration that is everywhere witnessed in the region between the Atlantic and Abyssinia. Here agglutination, both with prefixed and postfixed particles, is the prevailing morphological order, as in the Mandingan, Fulah, Nubian, Dinkan, and Mangbattu groups. But every shade of transition is also presented between true agglutination and inflection of the Hamito-Semitic types, as in Hausa, Kanuri, Kanem, Dasa or Southern and Teda or Northern Tibu[140].

Elsewhere, and especially in Upper Guinea, the originally agglutinating tongues have developed on lines analogous to those followed by Tibetan, Burmese, Chinese, and Otomi in other continents, with corresponding results. Thus the Tshi, Ewe, and Yoruba, surviving members of a now extinct stock-language, formerly diffused over the whole region between Cape Palmas and the Niger Delta, have become so burdened with monosyllabic homophones (like-sounding monosyllables), that to indicate their different meanings several distinguishing tones have been evolved, exactly as in the Indo-Chinese group. In Ewe (Slave Coast) the root do, according as it is toned may mean to put, let go, tell, kick, be sad, join, change, grow big, sleep, prick, or grind. So great are the ravages of phonetic decay, that new expedients have been developed to express quite simple ideas, as in Tshi (Gold Coast) addanmu, room (addan house, mu interior); akwancherifo, a guide (akwan road, cheri to show, fo person); ensahtsiabah, finger (ensah hand, tsia small, abbah child = hand's-little-child); but middle-finger = "hand's-little-chief" (ensahtsiahin, where ehin chief takes the place of abbah child[141]).

The "Drum Language."

Common both to Sudanese and Bantus, especially about the western borderlands (Upper Guinea, Cameruns, etc.) is the "drum-language," which affords a striking illustration of the Negro's musical faculty. "Two or three drums are usually used together, each producing a different note, and they are played either with the fingers or with two sticks. The lookers-on generally beat time by clapping the hands. To a European, whose ear and mind are untrained for this special faculty, the rhythm of a drum expresses nothing beyond a repetition of the same note at different intervals of time; but to a native it expresses much more. To him the drum can and does speak, the sounds produced from it forming words, and the whole measure or rhythm a sentence. In this way, when company drums are being played at an ehsádu [palaver], they are made to express and convey to the bystanders a variety of meanings. In one measure they abuse the men of another company, stigmatising them as fools and cowards; then the rhythm changes, and the gallant deeds of their own company are extolled. All this, and much more, is conveyed by the beating of drums, and the native ear and mind, trained to select and interpret each beat, is never at fault. The language of drums is as well understood as that which they use in their daily life. Each chief has his own call or motto, sounded by a particular beat of his drums. Those of Amankwa Tia, the Ashanti general who fought against us in the war of 1873-4, used to say Pĭrĭhūh, hasten. Similar mottoes are also expressed by means of horns, and an entire stranger in the locality can at once translate the rhythm into words[142]."

Similar contrasts and analogies will receive due illustration in the detailed account here following of the several more representative Sudanese groups.