A vocabulary of the Yoruba language

1852·13.2 MB·English

by  Crowther, Sammuel Adjai, bp., 1806?-1891

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VOCABULARY
OI' THK
GRUB LANGUAGE,
Y A
COMPILED BY TIIK
REV. SAMUEL CROWTHER,
NATIVE MISSIOXARY OF THE CHURCH MISSIONARY SOCIETY.
TOGETHER WITH
INTRODUCTORY REMARKS,
BY Tilft. ,
REV. 0. E. VIDAL, M. A.
IJISHOP DESIGNATEOF .SIERRA l.EONE.
SEELEYS, FLEET STREET,
AND HANOVER STREET, HANOVER SQUARE, LONDON.
1852.

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ADVERTISEMENT.
The Yoruba Country, lying between the 2° and 6° W.
long, and 6° and 10° N. lat., and due north of the Bight
of Benin, has been, for more than a quarter of a century,
the chief seat of the African slave-trade. Many Negroes,
and, amongst them, Mr. Crowther, now a Clergyman of
the Church of England, the compiler of the following
work, were re-captured from Brazilian slavers by the
cruisers of the British squadron, and landed at Sierra
Leone, where they received a Christian education in the
schools of the Church Missionary Society. No less than
3000 of these involuntary emigrants have since returned
to the land of their birth ; and it has also pleased God
to bless the labours of the Society's Missionaries in the
chief town, Abbeokuta, to the establishment ofa flourish-
ing Mission amongst the Aborigines, commenced August
3, 1846, and now numbering several hundred converts.
A
Christian literature became at once a desideratum
for this rising Christian community. This want Mr.
Crowther is at present supplying. A Yoruba Primer,
the Gospel according to St. Luke, the Acts of the Apo-
stles, St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans, the Epistles of St.
James and St. Peter, and selections of the Book ofCom-
iv
( )
nioii Prayer, embracing all the more important parts of
it, except the Psalms, Epistles, and Gospels, are already
published, and may, most of them, be obtained at the
Society's House. A new and improved edition of Mr.
-Crowtiler's Yoruba Grammar is now in the press, havinsj
just received his revision and corrections. And it is
hoped that the present work, containing near 3000
vocables, may do much toward settling a rich andeupho-
nous language, spoken, probably, by 3,000,000ofthe Afri-
can race, but till within the last ten years never re-
duced to writing. The materials were collected by Mr.
Crowther since his return to his native land, and the pro-
verbial and idiomatic sayingsinterspersed throughoutthe
book were taken down by him from the lips of his coun-
trymen in the course ofcommon conversation. They are
here introduced to illustrate the genius of the language ;
but they are no less valuable ethnologically, as elucida-
ting many ofthe characteristics of the national mind of
this very interesting people.
We
refer the reader to the valuable details on both
these points contained in the very able article with which
this work is enriched, from the pe—n of one of the best liv-
ing scholarsin African languages the Bishop Designate
ofSierra Leone, whose first act upon enteringon his new
see will be thus associated with a measure for the dif-
fusion amongst the Yorubans, in their own tongue, ofthat
Sacred Word which will be at once the standard and the
subject of all his ministrations among them.
The system of phonography employed in the Vocabu-
V
( )
—
lary which also contains the analysis or derivation of
—
each several word is that adopted by this Society in its
" Rules for reducing unwritten languages to alphabetical
writing in Roman characters, with reference especially to
the languages spoken in Africa," appended to the Church
Missionary Report for 1848-49, in which '^ it hasnot been
attempted to form a perfect phonetic system, but one
which practical experience suggests as the most expe-
dient under all the circumstances of the case." A sum-
mary of it, as far as it bears on the present subject, will
be found atp. (40).
The work is now sent forth with the prayerful hope
that it may do much, in God's hand,towards facilitating
the progress of the Gospel in a land which has peculiar
claims on the efforts and sympathies ofEngland.
Church Missionary House,
April 12, 1852.