AFRICAN LANGUAGES

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 970, 13 May 1930, Page 14

AFRICAN LANGUAGES

THIRTY MASHONA DIALECTS TO BE UNIFIED TASK FOR PHILOLOGISTS "Welding thirty dialects of the Mashona tribe of Southern Rhodesia into one standardised language is the task undertaken by a staff of philologists under the supervision cf Professor Clement R. Doke of the University of Witwatersrand. Dr. Doke is professor of Bantu studies at the university. African philologists have been interested in the Mashona tribe. They are descended from the Monomotapa natives that figure largely in most old African travel books. Apart from the desire to civilise this tribe research workers in African history’ and language want to preserve the history, legends and traditions of the tribe. Carnegie Foundation’s Aid Professor Doke interested representatives of the Carnegie Foundation in nis linguistic project while they were visiting South Africa. The Foundation came to his assistance by establishing a travelling fellowship in order to relieve him from his university duties. The government of Southern Rhodesia appointed a committee of experts to assist in the work, and from all parts of the territory European settlers and missionaries wrote to offer their assistance. Doke began his studies a year ago, and has returned after the first of his tours through Southern Rhodesia. “We do not intend making an artificial language,” he explained at the outset, “but by unifying the orthographies throughout the area, by using one method of writing these dialects, by compiling a standard dictionary comprising four or five of the principal ones, and by standardising the grammar we hope that in a short number of years one literary idiom will evolve.” Professor Doke undertook the invention of a new alphabet for the Mashona language, and succeeded In devising one containing thirty-two letters. Difficult to Represent Many tribal words sound so alike that the investigators sought for a method of distinguishing them when put down in type. “Eat” and “Fear” are two expressions whose close resemblance kept the investigators puzzled until an ingenious adoption of the letter “y” into the Mashona language solved the conundrum. “Q” and “L” have been omitted in Professor Doke’s alphabet, but in their place eight other new and unfamiliar looking symbols have been adopted. The natives are becoming interested in the work. It has been explained to the elders of the tribes that the literary form of their language would enable them to converse with races whose speech they only imperfectly understand. School books will henceforth be published in the standardised Mashona instead of in Zeburna or Manyika and all the other dialects used hitherto.