ABSTRACT
I think I have sometimes been asked—by persons whose philological science was somewhat more imperfect than my own—whether Grimm’s Law was applicable to the Bantu Languages. Of course, as the law in question is only a statement of what happens to certain consonants in the Indo-European languages, the answer must be no. But the principle on which it is based, that of the permutation of consonants, holds good, and seems to work out with unfailing regularity. That is, if we meet with any apparent irregularities, they are probably due, either to imperfect observation of the sounds, or to the operation of some law not yet ascertained: in either case, they will disappear in the light of further knowledge.
