LANGUAGE IS LIMITED TO TWO LETTERS

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 14, Issue 46, 3 October 1949, Page 6

LANGUAGE IS LIMITED TO TWO LETTERS

A language limited to two letters, two syllables, or two tones seems like an impossibility, yet such _ a language is transmitted by throbbing signal drums of the Belgian Congo, the traditional jungle telegraph. It is literally simpler than ABC. It works on the principle of transmitting the sentence “I am coming,” by the tones “Da-da-Da-da” and the sentence “I have come” by the tones “Da-da-Da.” The drum itself is hollowed from a hardwood tree. It is limited to two tones, the result of cutting wood thicker on one side than on the other. These two tones, manipulated by expert drummers, can “spell out” complex messages. Trick in Vocabulary

The trick lies in the vocabulary. Since spoken words translated into only two tones would often sound the same, a system evolved for substituting descriptive phrases. Instead of saying it was going to rain, the announcer would beat this warning: “Badman, son of disease, is coming* down on clods of earth.” Many an African explorer, coming into, an African settlement, was surprised that news of his arrival preceded him. Although long distance drumming is limited in range by boundaries of local dialects, the native telegraph has been widely used in Central Africa for decades.