During The Period Of My Visit At Kuruman, Mr. Moffat, Who Has Been
A Missionary In Africa During Upward Of
Forty years, and is well known
by his interesting work, "Scenes and Labors in South Africa",
was busily engaged in
Carrying through the press, with which
his station is furnished, the Bible in the language of the Bechuanas,
which is called Sichuana. This has been a work of immense labor;
and as he was the first to reduce their speech to a written form,
and has had his attention directed to the study for at least thirty years,
he may be supposed to be better adapted for the task than any man living.
Some idea of the copiousness of the language may be formed from the fact
that even he never spends a week at his work without discovering new words;
the phenomenon, therefore, of any man who, after a few months' or years'
study of a native tongue, cackles forth a torrent of vocables,
may well be wondered at, if it is meant to convey instruction.
In my own case, though I have had as much intercourse with the purest idiom
as most Englishmen, and have studied the language carefully,
yet I can never utter an important statement without doing so very slowly,
and repeating it too, lest the foreign accent, which is distinctly perceptible
in all Europeans, should render the sense unintelligible. In this I follow
the example of the Bechuana orators, who, on important matters,
always speak slowly, deliberately, and with reiteration.
The capabilities of this language may be inferred from the fact that
the Pentateuch is fully expressed in Mr. Moffat's translation in fewer words
than in the Greek Septuagint, and in a very considerably smaller number
than in our own English version. The language is, however, so simple
in its construction, that its copiousness by no means requires the explanation
that the people have fallen from a former state of civilization and culture.
Language seems to be an attribute of the human mind and thought;
and the inflections, various as they are in the most barbarous tongues,
as that of the Bushmen, are probably only proofs of the race being human,
and endowed with the power of thinking; the fuller development of language
taking place as the improvement of our other faculties goes on.
It is fortunate that the translation of the Bible has been effected
before the language became adulterated with half-uttered foreign words,
and while those who have heard the eloquence of the native assemblies
are still living; for the young, who are brought up in our schools,
know less of the language than the missionaries; and Europeans
born in the country, while possessed of the idiom perfectly,
if not otherwise educated, can not be referred to for explanation of any
uncommon word. A person who acted as interpreter to Sir George Cathcart
actually told his excellency that the language of the Basutos
was not capable of expressing the substance of a chief's diplomatic paper,
while every one acquainted with Moshesh, the chief who sent it,
well knows that he could in his own tongue have expressed it without study
all over again in three or four different ways.
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