Abstract
IT may be said at once that this is a very valuable contribution to the ethnology of Africa. In its thoroughness it recalls work characteristic of the latest German school. A trifling defect is the trick which both authors have of separating their African words into syllables, no doubt to facilitate immediate pronunciation by the unlearned; but, although this plan might be recommended in certain important words at their first appearance, it becomes irritating to the eye when perpetuated throughout the book, and sometimes the separation of syllables cuts athwart the etymology of root-words. The same remarks apply to the introduction of the apostrophe after the initial “m” or “n.” To anyone really versed in Bantu studies this apostrophe is anathema, as it is quite unnecessary. A writer fastidious about Bantu prefixes supplies a hyphen between the prefix and the root, and not an apostrophe.
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References
"With a Prehistoric People. The Akikūyu of British East Africa". Being some Account of the Method of Life and Mode of Thought found existent amongst a Nation on its First Contact with European Civilisation. By W. Scoresby Routledge and Katherine Routledge (born Pease). Pp. xxxii+392. (London: Edward Arnold, 1910.) Price 21s. net.
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JOHNSTON, H. The Akikuyu of East Africa 1 . Nature 84, 41–42 (1910). https://doi.org/10.1038/084041a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/084041a0