Ix.—the Phonetic Structure of the Sechuana Language.

THE Sechuana language is the third in importance of the South African Bantu languages, the two more important ones being Zulu and Xosa (Kaffir).It is spoken in Rechuanaland, the Orange Free State, and in parts of Rhodesia, the Transraal, and Cape Colony.The number of people speaking the langua,ge is difficult to compute, but it is probably somewhere near 750,000.My work on this language was done in collaboration with Mr. S. T. Plaatje (plaki), who belongs to the Rolong (baro1o:q) tribe, and is a native of Mafeking (mapikk8:t)), one of the chief centres where the Sechuana language is spoken.The object of this paper is to describe the pronunciation of Sechuans, and incidentally to show how important i t is that a proper phonetic analysis should be made in order to understand the grammatical structure of such a language.The Sechuana language appears to contain twentyeight phonemes, i.e. twenty-eight sounds or small families of sounds which are capable of distinguishing one word from another.These twenty-eigh t phonemes are not adequately represented in any of the five conventional orthographies at present in use (see Plaatje, Sechuuna Proverbs,' p. 13).I n international

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