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can never become a substitute for tribal speech either in the usage of the people or in the schools; its proper function is to serve as a second language to the speakers of tribal vernaculars, and where such a language exists or can readily be found it has its legitimate place in the intermediate stage of an educational system. As far as the immediate needs of the Southern Sudan are concerned, this is the stage which I think least important. It should not be forgotten also that when thinking of a lingua franca for the Southern Sudan

one generally envisages some language which has been, or is to be,

introduced from outside the area with which we are concerned and is therefore to that extent unnatural and unsuitable. One would be more inclined to welcome the gradual spread of one of the languages indigenous to the area.

I have put forward these views merely as a basis for discussion, and advise that, before proceeding to consideration of the details of the group language system, the Conference in full session should endeavour to arrive at some agreement on the main principles. — If agreement is obtained, a series of committees could then consider the question of group languages.

The third object of the Conference is to discuss the possibility of the adoption of a unified system of orthography.

I do not intend to take up your time at this juncture with a lengthy disquisition on a subject about which Professor Westermann will speak in detail and with full knowledge, but will merely attempt to

indicate some of the general issues involved in this admittedly thorny question.

We are not, I think, aiming atasystem of orthography which will be scientifically perfect from the point of view of phonetics, but one which will fulfil the practical needs of the teachers and speakers of the vernaculars, and it may be argued that there are languages, such

as English, in which no inconvenience is felt from the use of an unscientific orthography. Nevertheless I submit that it would be wrong to introduce an illogical and confusing form of writing for languages which are now for the first time being reduced to writing. It may be said that during the last twenty years much has been done already to reduce our Southern Sudan languages to writing, but with all honour to those who have given themselves unsparingly to this task, I think we must admit that as yet the surface only has been scratched and that by far the bigger portion of this task lies ahead. This being so, we should not hesitate to jettison some of the good

work already done for the sake of the larger interests involved.

I think that all would agree that we must use one letter for one phoneme and employ the Roman characters as the basis of our alphabet.

The problem that remains is how to write phonemes that are not accurately represented by any letter of the Roman alphabet. This may be approached in three ways :—

(1) Certain distinctions may be disregarded, and it may be left to the reader to recognize from the context which of two similar sounds is appropriate to the meaning ;