es the
initial _T_ becomes _R_ (_Ru-_, _Ro-_) or _L_ (_Lu-_, _Lo-_) or even _Y_
(_Yo-_), the concord following the fortunes of the prefix. The 13th prefix
(_Ka-_) is sometimes confused with the 7th (_Ki_) and merged into it and
vice versa. _Ka-_ very often takes the 8th prefix as a plural, more
commonly the 12th, sometimes the 14th. This prefix (_Ka-_) entirely
disappears in the north-western section of the Bantu languages. Bleek
thought that it persisted in the attenuated form of _E-_ so characteristic
of the Cameroon and northern Congo languages, but later investigations show
this _E-_ to be a reduction of _Ki-_ (_Ke-_) the 7th prefix. The 14th
prefix _Bu-_ is very persistent, but frequently loses its initial letter
_B_, which is either softened into _V_ or _W_, or disappears altogether,
the prefix becoming _U-_ or _O-_ or _Ow-_. Sometimes this prefix becomes
palatized into _By-_ or even _T[vs]-_ (_C-_). The concord follows suit. The
15th prefix, _Ku-_, occasionally loses its initial _K_ or softens into _Hu_
or [Greek: chu] or strengthens into _Gu_. Its concord under these
circumstances sometimes remains in the form of _Ku-_. The 16th, _Pa-_,
prefix is one of the most puzzling in its distribution and its phonetic
changes. A very large number of the Bantu languages in the north, east and
west have a dislike to the consonant P, which they frequently transmute
into an aspirate (_H_), or soften into _V_, _W_, or _F_, or simply drop
out. There is too much evidence in favour of this prefix having been
originally _Pa-_ or _Mpa-pa_ to enable us to give it any other form in
reconstructing the Bantu mother-tongue. Yet in the most archaic Bantu
dialects to the north of the Victoria Nyanza it is nowhere found in the
form of _Pa-_. It is either _Ha-_ (and _Ha-_ changes eastward into _Sa-_!)
or _Wa-_.[15] But for its existence in this shape in the language of Uganda
one might almost be led to think that the 16th locative prefix began as
_Ha-_, and by some process without a parallel changed in the east and south
to the form of _Pa-_. There are, however, a good many place names in the
northern part of the Uganda protectorate, in the region now occupied by
Nilotic negroes, which begin with _Pa-_. These place names would seem to be
of ancient Bantu origin in a [v.03 p.0362] land from which the Bantu
negroes were subsequently driven by Nilotic invaders from the north. They
may be relics therefore of a time before the _Pa-_ prefix of those