Mba de icɛ icɛ na ala Igbo nwɛrɛ ɛmumɛ-ihɛ ha na-ɛmɛ na arɔ na arɔ de ka omɛ-na-ala ha si de. Na ala Owɛrɛ, otu ɛmumɛ-ihɛ de nkɛ ana-akpɔ Oru Owɛrɛ, ana-ɛmɛ na arɔ na arɔ mgbɛ iri ji ɔhɵrɵ fɔdɵrɵ ihɛ de ka otu ɔnwa. Ɔ bɵ ɛmumɛ-ihɛ nkɛ mɛrɛ ka ndi Owɛrɛ mɛfuɛ ɔtɵtɵ ɛgo na ogɛ ociɛ ma ɔ bɵgh kwa otu ahɵ ugbua na ihi na ɔtɵtɵ ndi Owɛrɛ aghɔɔla ndi Church wɛɛ rapɵ ya.

Im folgenden gebe ich in grossen Züigen das Bild wieder, welches sich mir nach meinen Beobachtungen in den Jahten 1926–1928 und nach der Durcharbeitung der Ergebnisse von den Buschmännern Südwestafrikas bietet.

Die Besuchten Stämme: Besondere Aufmerksamkeit habe ich den Ost-!Kung ausserhalb der Polizeizone im Norden und Osten des Bezirkes Grootfontein gewidmet. Weiterhin habe ich die auf den Farmen dieses Bezirkes und des Bezirkes Outjo lebenden Hei||om und die Hei||om der Etoshapfanne studiert. Im Ambolande besuchte ich die sogenannten !Kung im westlichen Otjimpolofelde, die Daman-Buschmänner des Palmbusches östlich von Ondonga, die bantuisierten Buschleute von Eunda, Ongandjera, Uukualuthi und Ukuambi. Besondere Exkursionen führten mich zu den Nogau am mittleren Omuramba Epukiro und in die Naukluft.

Regarding the true classification of the numerous Bantu languages we are still very much in the dark. We need much more detailed information upon many areas and collation of work before the various types, languages, and dialects which go to make up the Bantu family can be accurately mapped out. We do know, however, that Bantu languages are associated together broadly into a number of zones or types, which to a great extent are determined by geographical position. The migration and counter-migration of tribes, however, naturally cause much overlapping of these types and the formation of numerous enclaves which have to be taken into account. On the question of nomenclature then, the term ‘type’ will probably be less objectionable than that of ‘zone’, though the actual names of the types will of necessity be regional, such as ‘South-eastern’, ‘North-western’, ‘Central’, etc.

This survey of text-books on history and geography, like those previously published on hygiene and agriculture and nature study text-books, has been prepared in accordance with the decision of the Executive Council of the Institute to compile lists of text-books in actual use in Africa in order to provide material which will be helpful in the preparation of new books and will also show what additional books are most needed. We had intended to confine ourselves to notes on history text-books only, but we found that the teaching of history and geography is so closely connected in most areas that unless both subjects were dealt with the survey would be of little value. The notes have been compiled from a variety of sources. Like previous surveys this is incomplete and we hope that its publication will elicit criticism, comment, and additional information. Our sources of information have been official publications, interviews with education officers and missionaries, and discussion by a group of officials and missionaries convened in London.

The Arab scholar Ibn Batuta, who travelled in the Sudan in the fourteenth century, speaks in his report of the country of Gobar, the Gobir of to-day. Gobir must at that time have been one of the important centres of Hausaland, for again Leo Africanus, a Berber born in Granada, and a great African traveller, whose book was published in Latin in 1556, mentions the language of Gobir, which is Hausa, and which, according to him, was even then one of the most important languages in the Sudan. This is still so to-day. Hausa, from being the language of very active and very far-travelling traders, has a radiation hardly inferior to that of any other African language. Hausa merchants are to be found in all the important places in the West Central Sudan between the Atlantic and Mediterranean coasts, in the oases of the great desert, and even in the Eastern Sudan and on the Red Sea: it has for centuries been a real lingua franca. It is therefore natural that the language should have come early to the notice of European travellers and scholars. In 1812, Adelung and Vater published their Mithridates, which contains among other subjects a collection of African vocabularies; in these is found on page 153 a list of ‘Afnu and Kashne’ words. Afnu is a designation of the Hausa people and Kashne is Katsina. From this time on a large number of English and German, and to a smaller extent of French, travellers, missionaries, and linguists have contributed to the exploration of the language and to its literature. There is an abundance of grammars, vocabularies, dictionaries; also a considerable amount of translation work has been done, of which Dr. Miller's translation of the Bible is the most important. The language had become literary even before the advent of the European: through Islam the Arabic script had become known, and it was soon used by learned Hausa malams to write theirown language. This art is not extinct to-day, and manuscripts on various subjects—mostly history, religion, poetry, and folk-lore, are stored in European libraries and in private libraries of native Hausa scholars.

Les Faŋ étaient autrefois une peuplade guerrière et cannibale, émigrant sans cesse par étapes, de l'arrière-pays de l'est du Caméroun vers le fleuve Ogooué. Seule la mer de l'estuaire du Gabon, et les contrées marécageuses du bas-fleuve les ont arrêtés. Ils sont arrivés sur le fleuve en même temps que, de la mer, montaient après 1870 les conquérants, les commerçants et les missionnaires. Les arts purement indigènes, au contact de la civilisation, ont été insensiblement anémiés, et sont, pour la plupart, en voie de disparition, pour le grand malheur des ethnographes et des amateurs d'art autochtone.

If the compilation of statistics is reckoned a science, what is the interpretation of them? That is a question not easy to answer, especially when, as in the present case, the interpretation is even more halting than the imperfect statistics themselves. We do not know, and so we cannot properly interpret; but, as the years go by, these Census Reports will supply data, which is knowledge.

The awards in the fourth competition for books written by Africans in African languages have now been made, and the list of prize-winners is given below. This was the first time that only three languages were selected for competition, these being Yoruba, Kikuyu, and Chuana. Altogether 39 manuscripts were received, divided among the selected languages as follows: Yoruba 18, Kikuyu 12, Chuana 9. The experts who assisted in the examination of the entries were: Mr. A. Hunt Cooke, Archdeacon J. McKay, Mr. H. G. Ramshaw for Yoruba; Rev. T. F. C Bewes, Mr. W. Scott Dickson, Mrs. Rampley for Kikuyu; Herr F. Krüger for Chuana; and the Sub-Committee appointed by the Executive Council to judge the manuscripts desires to express its indebtedness to these experts for the careful reports submitted, which gready facilitated the work.

It is possible to live years m Africa before making the discovery that direct and simple phrases, apparently referable to everyday, material objects with the ordinary surface meanings of the individual words employed, may have totally unexpected values. Indeed, one may live many years in Africa and never make this discovery. Witness the view accepted by so many as to the ‘poverty’ of the African's vocabulary and its ‘incapacity to express abstract thought’. We are too much at the mercy of uninformed opinion crystallized into conventional small talk; uninformed opinion that has accepted and then transmitted through books, or through lectures, or simply through conversation, views that are false, until a body of conventional belief has formed across the surface of the true situation so smotheringly as almost to defeat every effort of the facts to get to the surface. It is like the situation produced by oil on the surface of a pool that so deprives the life within the pool of air that it dwindles and dies beneath the oily curtain. In the home and roadside talk of Africa there lies an unguessed world of meaning, just beneath the surface, waiting to be released.