While sufficient for ordinary purposes, the words of a language may be too few for exact translation. The English vocabulary enables us to speak of: (1) Objects (and actions) in the material world. (2) Relations between these objects; such relations are numerous. (3) Things and relations in the mental world, which are named through analogies in the material world, for material things are more readily named than mental. (4) Besides there are the names of Science. In names of the 1st kind, Yao is as full as English. In names of the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th kinds, where a greater abstraction is implied, it falls short. An African, while able to perceive all such relations, &c., does not find it necessary to name many of them. Even though he named all that he observed, his names would be lost, for in the absence of writing, few words acquire fixity except those in general use. Take the word _grey_; present a grey object to a Yao, and he calls it black or white, but as a matter of fact, he knows perfectly that it is different from either of these colours. In English we speak of a man as being good, upright, straightforward, true, honest, honourable, just, strict, religious, pious, holy, pleasant, courteous, &c.; but in Yao there are not names for so many shades of character, and one or two words must do service for the whole list. We shall not wonder at this if we consider how many of the above epithets have been taken into the English language from other tongues. A modern mission to our Saxon ancestors would have found their vocabulary as poor as we find the African. 2. _The Nature of the Words._—Where one language has an easy word, another may express the same idea (_a_) by a word dreadful to pronounce—“a vocable sufficient to splinter the teeth of a crocodile”; or (_b_) by a cumbrous combination of words. (_a_) The Yao words are easy to pronounce, the rule being that every consonant is followed by a vowel. But they are longer than English words. If a Yao had to say _transubstantiations_, he would say _tiransubisitantiation(i)si_. Again, where we say “You believed him,” he prefers to say “You-him-believed,” in one word. (_b_) A language may have a cumbrous combination of words. When the Romans had to work with their numerical notation of IX. and XI., we can excuse them for not making much of simple multiplication and division. So when the Yao express 99 by _makumi msanu ni makumi mcheche kwisa msanu ni mcheche_,[14] we may expect that their numerical system will not care to go any farther! B. GRAMMAR.