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HINTS TO LEARNERS OF SECWANA.
It is not easy to teach Secwana according lo the rules of
grammar, and those who try so to learn it will meet with
many difficulties.
All that is attempted in these hints is to give learners an
insight into the structure of the language, and guide them in
their efforts to acquire it.
Canon Crisp, in-his Notes towards a Secwana Grammar,
has given us the language in a grammatical form as nearly,
perhaps, as it is possible to give it, and learners will find his
book a great help.
Orthography.
There is a good deal of difference of opinion as to liow
Secwana should be written. No general rules have as yet
been agreed upon, and words will be found spelt differently
in different books. A learner, however, will soon become
accustomed to the variety.
The orthography of this vocabulary is that used by the
missionaries of the London Missionary Society. The dialect
is, for the most part, that of the Batlhaping tribe.
Letters and Their Sounds.
The letters 6, 7i, fc, £, m, w, p, s, w, and ?/, are used as in
English.
In the north, and also among the Barolong, h has a sound
resembling bh, or fh; and in some books it is written /.
Sometimes li has the sound of r.
y sometimes has a sound approaching the English j) as, for
instance, in Leywa.
n is sounded like ng in bung.
d is more like the English d than any other letter; though
it is thought by some to resemble I and r. Perhaps the letter
d only partially sounded is as near an approach to the sound
as an English learner could get without help.
c is sounded like ch in church.
g is a guttural, and is used as in Dutch. It is heard also in
the Scotch word loch.
a is like a in father.
e has two sounds, one like a in age, and the other i in win,
is like e in web.
i is like the double e in see and been.
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