Grammar of the Bórnu Or Kanuri Language

GRAMMAR BORNU OR KANUlii LANGUAGE. BY REV. »S. W. KOELLE, MissioNAin' oi' Till', c:iniii(:n MissioNARV soriicw LONDON CHURCH MISSIONARY IIOUSE^ SAT.ISJUTRY SQUARK. 1854. lESA. XVIII, 7. TTiz^rsn Djr ^tzj-^n^*' t^S^n^ - ni«n!J nin^^ - «^nn ni^n T 't\ : t: TI-- •- "T '- "tl .. Sit V -: T : 't t : att I • t .1 THE REV. HENRY VENN, B.D., THE HONORARY CLERICAL SECRETARY OF THE CHURCH MISSIONARY SOCIETY, WITHOUT WHOSE COMPREHENSIVE MIND IT WOULD NEITHER HAVE BEEN COMMENCED NOR COMPLETED, THIS GEAMMAR IS MOST RESPECTFULLY AND AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED BY THE AUTHOR. '^ A /^ ^^ -^ O GENERAL UN- PREFACE, It is with heartfelt gratitude to the Giver of every good gift, that I take up my pen to write a few remarks pre- fatory to the following Grammar of the Kanuri language, which is spoken in the very heart of Africa. God has been pleased to preserve my life, to bestow fresh health after many an attack of fever, and to grant me energy and perseverance for the pursuit of my solitary and difficult studies, in the unhealthy and enervating climate of Sierra Leone, till the work was thus far accomplished. During my stay on the Western Coast of Africa (from December 1847 till February 1853), the cultivation of the Kanuri language occupied me almost three full years. As there was no native literature, considerable time was required, merely to bring some satisfactory portion of the language before my view : and then what a chaos of forms did it present ! I had often just flattered myself to have discovered a rule, when, all at once, a new expression from my interpreter not only disappointed my hopes, but added to the previous difficulties. When I commenced my Kanuri studies, nothing whatever had been written on the grammar of that language, neither was any thing known as to its general character ; so that I was left to pursue my way through an entirely unknown region, where every step brought new and strange objects under my notice, contrary to every thing that I could have anticipated. Under such circumstances, two op- posite errors are to be avoided : on the one hand there is the danger of being carried away by a desire for the new and the strange, so as to make common things look uncommon ; and, on the other hand, that incredulity is to be guarded against, which postulates that the languages, hitherto unknown, * a — 11 PREFACE. cannot present features actually new, I eiuleavourcd to avoid these extremes by tracing, as far as I was able, the grammatical forms to their proper origin, and by comparing the Kanuri with as many other languages as were k^within my reach. But I must confess, that in spite of my honest wish not to make a grammar for the Kanuri, but modestly and diligently to learn tiie grammar which the Kanuri has long ago made for itself, it from time to time required fresh exertion to keep my mind free from preju- dice and preconceived notions; and whenever anew feature in the language came under my notice for the first time, the sensation which it produced in me was generally that of suspicion, and a desire to attribute it to incorrectness in my interpreter, till a frequent recurrence of the same con- vinced me of its reality. When, on such occasions, I remonstrated with ray interpreter, he used to say in his broken English: "Please, Massa, we country no stand like white man country : white man talk every thing straight, but " we can talk one thing in many different ways i. e. Please, sir, our language is not like white men''s language : white men have only one expression for one and the same thing, but we can express the same thing in many different ways." This richness of grammatical forms, especially in the verb, is a real difficulty in the language, and, as may be easily imagined, appeared to me at first rather formidable ; and it required no little perseverance and exertion on my part to reduce to order such a confused mass of forms, and to as- certain the often strange peculiarities and fine differences in their use. For be it remembered, that an unlettered negro, speaking the English but very imperfectly, cannot be re- quested to decline a noun, or conjugate a verb, or to define the difference between given tenses and moods : all these things can only be ascertained by the diligent research of the grammarian himself, and he cannot look to his interpreter for more than the supply of his working materials. Many a rule which is expressed in the grammar by a few words PREFACE. iil required clays and weeks for its discovery. To learn the *^ Kamiri language, for the first time, is certainly no easy task ; and my interpreter often told me that he had never heard a black man, who was not a native of Boruu, speak it correctly; whereas they, theBornuese, easily learn the language of the surrounding nations. It would be presumptuous in me to suppose that I have fully mastered the entire extent of the multifarious forms of this language, or that this first Grammar should be a perfect one ; but this much I hope, that it will be found an essential help to a thorough acquisition of the language, and, eventually, to the transla- tion of the word of God. The spiritual conquest and ''"^ subjugation of the world is a gradual work, whose achieve- ment employs many hands, and the bare consciousness of contributing in some measure towards that end is satisfactory, even though this contribution consist only in digging the metallic ore from the hidden bowels of the earth, which will afterward be converted into swords of victory. All the actions performed in the service of God for the good of mankind form one organic whole, from which no part may be missing : they are all^ required to bring about the final consummation, to usher in the eternal sabbath. Hence the meanest service which has a bearing in this direction is honourable, and may be rendered with that cheerfulness and confidence which is always inspired by the conviction that our objects are bound up with a great cause, and that we. labour for a brighter future. " '^-^ This leads to a direct answer to the question : Why I, as a Christian Missionary, devoted so much time to the study of the Kanuri language?" The Church Missionary Society, who, from a praiseworthy Christian compassion for the most degraded portion of our race, made the evangeli- zation of Africa one of their chief objects, have long ago felt the necessity of bringing to light, and rendering available by grammatical cultivation the languages of that mysterious continent, before they could reasonably expect to christianize IV PREFACE. the tribes by which they are spoken. With this view they for many years urged their Missionaries in Sierra Leone to study the native languages ; but frequent deaths, and the pressure of other labours, prevented their instructions from /producing the desired effect. But Sierra Leone, where slaves from almost every quarter of Africa had found an asylum of liberty, was too inviting a field to be left any longer unoccupied. The Committee appointed one of their Missionaries, the Rev. F. Schon, to devote himself exclu- sively to the study of languages. He spent several years in the study of the Hausa language, till the failure of his health compelled him to quit this field of labour. The results of his studies are preserved in his Hausa Grammar. ^t then fell to my lot to become his successor, and, at the same time, to take part in the instruction of the Fourah-Bay Institution. The directions of the Committee required of me, not only to furnish information respecting the whole question of African philology, but also to select some one language for my particular study. In its selection I was to be guided by the probability of " its becoming a sort of key to the study of other languages." At that time, however, the African languages were so little known, that, in deciding this question, I could not be guided by any strictly lingual »/3ata. The local Committee of Missionaries agreed with me in its being desirable that I should fix upon the Kanuri or Bornu language, as this was spoken by one of the mightiest nations in central Africa, and in the vicinity of Hausa, of which we already possessed a grammar. Accordingly, I selected one of the most suitable Bornuese of Sierra Leone as my interpreter, and commenced the language. In the >'^progress of my studies it became more and more evident that the Kanuri had no important affinities with other Negro languages, and that, for the present, it cannot be used for direct Missionary purposes, from the fanatical Muhammadan character of the Bornuese. For, whilst Muhammadanism has been waning in Europe, it has experienced a signal revival PREFACE. V in the interior of Africa, owing, as I learnt from my interpreter, to the Pulo movement, which lias been in oi)eration since the beginning of the present century. But by the time I had become possessed of this information, I had made such progress in the language, that it was considered advisable that I should proceed still farther, and then publish the results for the benefit of philology, and, as it is hoped, for the benefit of future Missionary enterprise. The language of this Grammar is the Kanuri, as it is spoken in the large province of Gazir, in the empire of Bornu, or, perhaps more correctly, as it was spoken there at the time when my interpreter left his home.

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