Ebook: Dictionary and Grammar of the Kongo Language

Publisher: www.luvila.com
Publication date: 1895
Number of pages: 340More than seven years have passed since the completion of the Dictionary and Grammar of the
Kongo language. During this time the New Testament has been translated, and other books for religious instruction and school use have been translated and prepared ; a Bi-monthly Magazine," Se kukianga" (The Dawn is Breaking), has appeared, containing original native articles. School work has been well pushed, and a Kongo correspondence passes freely between the natives about our stations. Kongo can no longer be spoken of as an unwritten language.All this literary activity has called for an Appendix to the work published in 1887. Every new word acquired has been most carefully preserved and investigated ; obscure idioms, and any constructions throwing light on the Grammar and Syntax, have been noted. While the New Testament
was in the press, the Appendix to the Dictionary was printed. Returning to the Kongo a few days after the first hundred copies of the New Testament came from the book-binders, the mass of Grammatical and Syntactical notes which had accumulated was studied and arranged.
The Dictionary of 1887 contains some 10,000 Kongo words, omitting as far as possible the thousands of derivative words, which, being formed from the root-words according to simple rules, needed no special note. As the possibilities of this highly flexible language are so great, these derivatives in actual or possible use would number hundreds of thousands ; it was therefore necessary rigorously to exclude them, except such as by their frequent or special usage required special note. Some 4,000 new words are now added on the same principle, which include, as far as possible, all words or roots which are used in the Kongo literature of the English Baptist Mission published up to the present. In the same way, the endeavour has been made to reduce the rules of Grammar and Syntax which have been found to be further necessary, during the literary work in which the correctness and sufficiency of the former work was tested. As for the correctness, it has been found that no great changes are necessary ; in some two or three cases only it has been necessary to narrow the application of certain rules which had been too widely stated ; these cases have been carefully noted in their proper places in the Grammar and Syntax of this Appendix.