Note 212 — NEGROLAND divided into Nations.

If we suppose the word Kissour pronounced N’Kissúr with the nasal sound, which among the Africans so often precedes the letter k, then its affinity with Inkizár becomes more apparent. The Portuguese, like the Arabs, employ an initial vowel in prefixing the nasal; thus for N’Yáka, N’Yambána, N’Góla, they write Inhaqua, Inhambana, Angola. Of the guttural pronunciation which seems to foreign ears to confound the a and u, many examples might be given. Leo Africanus says that one language (which he calls Sungai) extended from Málí to Kághó; and as we know that the Kissour, commencing at Jenni, now extends at least to Tomboktú, we are justified in concluding that it is the Sungai, or the language to which the Zagháï, the chief inhabitants of Inkizár, lent their name. We have seen that the word Daḳno, the name of the ordinary beverage of the people from Jenni downwards, was in use below Tomboktú in the fourteenth century. (See above, p. 84.) It avails little against this, that the Sungai language was also spoken in Málí: for what is more natural than that the language of the most populous and industrious part of an empire should be generally spoken in its capital; and that a Moorish merchant should give little attention to the language of the lower classes?