= you
_emaghi_ = they

When immediately before a verb these were abbreviated into _I_ or _it_,
_a_ or _ac_, _e_ or _ei_, _pa_ or _pag_, ta or _tag_, _e_ or _et_--I,
thou, he or she, we, you, they, according to their preceding a vowel or a
consonant. With words beginning with a consonant only the first syllable
of the pronoun was used.

The verb itself did not vary in the various persons, but it did vary in
its tenses by suffixes, sometimes after the pronoun, sometimes after the
verb. In the present tense the Bororos generally used for the purpose the
word _nure_, usually between the pronoun and the verb, with the pronoun
occasionally repeated after the _nure_; but in general conversation,
which was laconic, the pronoun was frequently suppressed
altogether--similarly to the frequent omission of the pronoun in the
English telegraphic language.

There were various other forms of pronouns, but I could not quite define
their absolute use--such as the _tched_ or _tcheghi_, which seemed to
include everybody, corresponding to the English _we_ in orations which
includes the entire audience, or the whole nation, or even the entire
human race.

The Bororo language was complete enough, the conjugation of verbs being
clearly defined into past, present, imperative and future.

The past was formed by interpolating between the pronoun and verb the
words _re gurai_, generally abbreviated into _re_. The imperative was
made chiefly by the accentuation of the words, and was susceptible of
inflexion in the second person singular and plural. The future was formed
by adding, sometimes after the pronoun, sometimes after the verb, the
words _modde_, _uo_, or _ua_.

At the end of the second volume, in the Appendix, will be found a
vocabulary of useful words needed in daily conversation which I collected
during my visit to the Bororos. I had made a much more complete
dictionary of their language, in a book which I kept for the purpose, but
unfortunately the book was lost with a great many other things in an
accident I had some months later on the Arinos River.

* * * * *

It was not possible to say that the Bororos shone in intelligence. It was
seldom one found an individual who could count beyond two. Everything in
the Bororo country was reckoned in couples--with the aid of fingers,
thumbs, and toes. The learned could thus reach up to twenty, or ten
pair--but beyond twenty no Bororo d