Page:Africa by Élisée Reclus, Volume 1.djvu/569

subjoined list of a few common words in the Dongolawi of the Nile and in four Kordo- fan dialects shows that the vocabulary also is essentially one :-

It is incredible that the speech of the Uaua Negroes and Kordofan Nubas, if origi- nally the same, could have maintained its identity with such slight changes as these for a period of nearly 4,400 years-that is, from the time of Pepi (2500 B.C.), when mention first occurs of the Uaua. It seems safe to conclude, that while the identity of the Nile and Kordofan Nubas is established, neither branch has any obvious or necessary connection with the extinct Uaua of the Egyptian records.

Independently of this consideration, the Nubian language, first clearly elucidated by Lepsius, presents some points of interest both to the philologist and ethnologist. Its Negro character is shown in its phonology, in the complete lack of grammatical gender, and in some structural peculiarities. Such is the infix j inserted between the verbal root and the plural pronominal object, as in ai tokki-j-ir = I shake them. As in Bantu, the verbal conjugation is highly developed, presenting such a multiplicity of forms that in Lepsius' Grammar the complete paradigm of a single verb fills as many as 110 pages. The Nubian language never appears to have been cultivated, or even committed to writing.* Hence it is not likely to afford the key, as some have suggested, to the numerous undeciphered inscriptions occurring along the banks of the Nile as far Bouth as Senaar. It enables us, however, to dispose of the so-called "Nuba-Fulah" family, originally constituted of heterogeneous elements by Frederick Müller, and generally accepted by anthropologists on the authority of that distinguished ethnologist. We have already seen at the outset that the Fulahs are a non-Negro race, most probably allied to the western Hamites of the Sahara. The Fulah speech, also, appears from Krause's Grammar to be a non-Negro language, betraying not the remotest resemblance to the Nuba. Thus the Nubas are of Negro stock and speech, and so the "Nuba-Fulah " family is dissolved, its disjecta membra finding each its place amongst its own kindred.