2. The Hottentot-Bushman. This is the lan guage of the dwarf tribes, and its relations to others or itself are vigorously debated. Muller thought it represented two ethnological and lin guistic divisions. Lepsius thinks it one, Bantu in race and Hamitic in language; but his con clusions are not accepted. Besides the main stock in southern Africa, this group includes the Pygmy dialects in central Africa; it is denied that they have kept their original languages, but this is true of many others, and the ethnological and linguistic problems have no necessary rela tion.
3. Hamitic. This includes (a) the Libyan or Berber dialects spoken across North Africa from the Canaries to Egypt — probably changed scores of times from top to bottom; (b) the ancient Egyptian, with the four dialects of its descendant Coptic (extinct save as the ritual language of the Coptic Church); (c) the non Semitic or Kushite Abyssinian dialects (for merly called Punic, sometimes Ethiopic, which was more generally applied to Geez) • as Bi shari (see BISHARIN), the ancient Be'clja, be tween Egypt and Abyssinia; Danakil (q.v.) or Dankali, native name Afar, between Abyssinia, Massowa and Obok; Somali and Galla, in their countries; Agau (through Abyssinia, the users believed to be its aborigines, with dialects as Chamir, Quara, etc.); Saho, between Abyssinia and Adulis Bay; Kaffa, Kullo, etc., in the high lands south of Abyssinia. The Fulah group (see above) and the Haussas in Sokoto have some Hamitic admixture. These Hamite tribes are much mixed, geographically or more in timately, with Semitic and Negro tribes or ele ments.
is a name given in 1889 by Muller to a group of Negro tribes south of Darfur, of which he wished to make a new family; the Nyam-Nyam and Monbuttu were the chief. All are of a lighter color than the typical Negro, and their languages are more distinctive still. As above said, it is probable that many such groups can be segregated on the best of grounds.
Systems of Writing.— Africa has four liv ing systems (not counting the fossil Coptic or the European used by those races) and has had four now represented only by inscriptions or papyri. The latter are : (1) Ancient Egyp tian, passing from hieroglyphics (a mixture of ideograms and syllables) through the cursive hieratic to the more cursive demotic, the or dinary script of business life. A few of the demotic characters are preserved in the ritual Coptic. (2) Ancient Phoenician, the ancestor of
all Western alphabets. (3) Ancient Ethiopian, used for the native tongue around Napata and Meroe. It was cursive and borrowed, but it is not known from whence, nor what language it represents. (4) Ancient Libyan or Numidian, borrowed from southern Arabia and read from the bottom up. There are many inscriptions in it in Algeria and Tunis, some of which have been deciphered; the first was the celebrated bilingual inscription of Taklca. The living sys tems are practically those of the Hamites and Semites, the others being mostly below the grade of civilization which uses such things ; and both the former use Semitic systems. The four are: 1. The only one developed in a Negro tribe, and with one exception the only one actually in vented and popularly used within historic times: that of the Vei, on the west coast near Cape Mountain, devised about 1834 by Doalu Bukere, a native with a rough knowledge of European printing. It was not an alphabetic system, but a syllabary, with complicated characters like hieroglyphics. It was later used for Moham medan missionary work, but has been sup planted by the European system, the Christian missionaries refusing to employ it.
2. That of the Touaregs or Saharan Ber bers, called tifinaghen. It seems to be a de scendant of the ancient Libyan, to which it is similar in reading from the bottom up.
3. The Arabic, used by all who wish to write the great language of Mohammedan Africa, the general medium of social and busi ness communication. It is also widely used to write other African languages : by the Berbers and Suahelis for Libyan ; by the people of Shoa for Amharic and those of Harar for Harari; by the Malays of Madagascar and by the Kaffirs.
4. The Amharic, used largely in and around Abyssinia ; it is an extension and modification of the ancient Geez or Ethiopic, which there fore we have not classed as dead, any more than the Greek and Roman alphabets can be so called. It is written from left to right like the Euro pean languages, the other Semitic systems being the reverse; and the vowels are Indicated by modifications of the consonants or marks added to them, making it a semi-syllabic rather than pure alphabetic system. It was borrowed from southern Arabia, and can be traced back to the 4th century on the monuments at Axum, the ancient capital of Abyssinia.