THE KING’ S BUSINESS
709
They would come inland and gather up natives from many different tribes and carry them off to Arabia and the near East, as slaves. In the course o f time, England prohibited slave trafficking and used to get after these slave dealers. Often ships, car rying a cargo o f slaves, would be captured and the captives -set -free. But o f course they were not taken back to -their own inland tribes, but would simply be landed promiscuously along the coast. You may wonder what-all this has to do with the language. It has had a wonderful influence on the language in this way. You see this sort o f thing went on for many years, and so all along the coast would be found a few people from all sorts and kinds o f interior tribes, They could not very well continue their old tribal languages, for only an odd person now and then would understand them, and so gradually there was built up a new language, which all o f the stragglers adopted. The language was a strange mix ture o f Arabic and the different native dia lects. In this way the Swahili language began, and it has grown into the most clas sical language, possibly, in all Africa, and doubtlessly the most widely spoken. It is the language used by the British govern ment and by the settlers in all the towns. Ideas can be well expressed in Swahili, which is Something to be grasped after in a native language. The entire Bible is printed and much published in this-lan guage; also school books and Pilgrim’s ,Progress, Daily Light, etc., etc. Now it is what might be called a foreign language to all who speak it, for it is not typical o f any one or two tribes.. For this reason inflections and intonations in it are not so hard to acquire. In a tribal language, take for instance the language o f this tribe sur rounding Kijabe, the Kikuyu tribe, there are tones and inflections used which are absolutely impossible for an ordinarily stupid person like myself to get without years o f practice. T or instance, there is the word “ita”— it means “call” ; .with a - very slight change in' the voice it means “strangled,” and with another very slight
change in tone it means “pour out.” So if I say “ Call the cat” the boys may under stand me to say “ Strangle the cat” or else “ Pour out the cat.” The people we see here are so used to hearing their language misused that they are very quick to under stand us, although sometimes we can see that they are almost tickled to pieces over what we say. When Ken goes off to the real “ out-in- the-jungle” villages; the natives cannot understand a word he says, and he takes one o f his boys who can understand his bad Kikuyu to translate for'him. W e are afraid to talk about the Lord Jesus to any except the boys we know well enough to know that they understand and will not laugh at our language, for fear o f only giving occa sion for merriment, and thus bringing Him into reproach. Now Swahili is different— almost all who understand our bad Kikuyu will be able to understand Swahili. Also it will be useful no matter where we go, as it is fast becoming 'so general, except in the very heart o f the native tribes. The Kikuyu tribe has a populace o f between '250 and 300 thousand people. There are mission stations enough in this tribe to reach them all. There-are other tribes that are sitting in utter darkness., and it is the Mission’s plan for us, as soon as they are able, to . send us on to some one o f these more needy places, and I m sure you .do not wonder that we are very anxious to go. When we are sent to some other tribe'to start a little station we will feel that we are there for keeps,” and it will be the language o f that tribe that we will try to conquer, even if it takes several years.' But in the meantime we have felt all along that studying Kikuyu is almost wasting our time, for we would probably just have a real good start when we might be stationed elsewhere, and never hear another word o f Kikuyu. But with Swahili we can reasonably expect to get along very well in any tribe. I have spent a long time explaining this, but hope it has interested you, for it has been a very im portant thing to us. Ken has especially talked and talked and worked ever since
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