BLEEK, WILHELM HEINRICH IMMANUEL (1827— 1875), German philologist, studied at Bonn and Berlin, where he first noted the philological peculiarities of the South African languages. In his Doctor's dissertation (Bonn, r851), De nomi num generibus linguarum A f ricae Australis, he endeavoured to show that the Hottentot language was of North African descent. Towards the close of 1856 he settled at Cape Town, and in 1857 was appointed interpreter by Sir George Grey, who appointed him librarian of the Sir George Grey collection in 186o. He introduced into European philology the word Bantu.
His works are Vocabulary of the Mozambique Language (1856) ; Handbook of African, Australian and Polynesian Philology (Cape Town and London, 1858-63) ; Comparative Grammar of the South African Languages (vol. i., 1869) ; Reynard the Fox in South Africa, or Hottentot Fables and Tales (1864) ; Origin of Language (1869).