It is now nearly twenty years since the author published, through the Lovedale Mission Press, an Introductory Kaffir Grammar " - now long out of print - which led the way in an attempt to deal with the language in a simplified manner based on analytic treatment. Not long afterwards the Rev. J. Torrend published an " Outline of Xosa-Kafir Grammar," in which he, independently, arrived at the same general conclusions regarding the language as myself, though expressed in a different terminology. These main principles have since been very generally accepted by subsequent writers on Kaffir and other Bantu languages.

The present work, which is entirely new, has occupied my leisure time for several years past. What I have tried to accomplish is thorough first-hand investigation of the facts of the language, full and orderly exposition of the different parts of the grammar - Phonology, Accidence, Syntax, and Derivation - and exhaustive exemplification of forms and usages.

Every effort has been made to present the facts with the utmost possible clearness to the eye and to the mind. The needs of various classes of readers have had to be kept in view, and on this account, while an endeavour has been made to base the treatment on scientific method, the results are stated in as simple language as the subject permits. Contents: Part I: Sounds, Part II: Words and Forms, Part III: Sentences, Part IV: Origin and Forms, Appendices, Vocabulary.

This re-edition has been published as no. 32 in the LINCOM Gramatica (LINGram) series (originally published 1906, London: Longmans, Green, and Co., written in English)