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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. |
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