CHAPTER I THE 3 0 U N D 3 I.- It is hazardous to write about the sounds of a language which one has never heard spoken, especially when the only available material is a badly written manuscript in which the spelling is inconsistent and there is no indication of stress or tone. One clue to the value of the symbols lies in the fact that one of the writers was a Muganda and that he, and at least one of his assistants, spoke the Nyoro tongue which is closely akin to Ganda. Presumably the symbols they employ in writing life have more or less the same value as in Ganda and Nyoro. This, however, cannot be a wholly satisfactory criterion, because (i; the sounds in Nyoro and Ganda are not always precisely identical, (2) there are evidently some sounds in Efe which do not occur in those languages, and (3) the values of the vowels are not clearly distinguished in Ganda and Nyoro books. The following sketch is, therefore, merely tentative. I have ventured to define the sounds provisionally, with diagrams in some instances. These definitions and diagrams are taken from Practical Phonetics for Students of African •Languages by D.tfestermann and Ida C.Ward (cited W.tf.), and The Phonetic and Tonal Structure of Efik by Ida C.Ward (cited I.C.W.). I have introduced them in the hope that they may assist other investigators in determining the sounds.