As we have already hinted, the Bantu family of languages, to which the Yao belongs, fills nearly the whole of Southern Africa. Besides the Bantu people there are the Hottentots. As early as 1850 we find Dr. W. H. J. Bleek writing, “The Hottentot language is to me at this moment of greater interest than any other. The facts have now so increased upon me and offer such strong analogies, that there is no further doubt in my own mind, that not only the Coptic but also the Semitic and all other languages of Africa (as Berber, the Galla dialect, &c., &c.), in which the distinction of the masculine and feminine gender pervades the whole grammar are of common origin”. Although the Yao is a genderless language, much of its folk lore resembles the Hottentot. Dr. Bleek has published 42 Hottentot tales. I have heard amongst the Yao, tales corresponding to 16 or 18 of these. CHAPTER XVIII. AFRICAN PHILOLOGY.—(_Continued_). Before stating the peculiarities of the Yao language, I shall illustrate the subject by reference to the speech of children. This form of illustration applies to unwritten languages generally; and although not much alluded to in books on Philology, it is, I venture to think, exceedingly important, not only for the theory of language, but for the guidance of persons that are confronted with unwritten tongues. While children are learning to speak, their slowness comes not entirely from the intellect, but from want of command of the vocal organs. On encountering a word that they cannot pronounce, they frame a word of their own which they employ instead. In imitating the word _table_, a child may say _dodo_, a sound which at first sight seems to have no relation to the word “table”. Yet the child employs it uniformly, and often for more than a year. Such imperfect imitations are not by accident: they follow laws similar to those principles that operate in changing the same original sound into the _quinque_ of Latin, the _pump_ of Welsh, and the _five_ of English. _Form of Words._—The syllable easiest for a child is a single consonant followed by a vowel. For _basket_ a child says _tase_; for _purse_, he says _tuse_. Where two consonants come together, as the _sk_ and _rs_ of these words, the child throws out one of them. He also drops the final _t_ in _basket_, and obtains a syllable ending with a vowel; and where no vowel exists he supplies one, as in _tuse_ for _purse_ (purs).