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Creating 'Union Ibo': Missionaries and the Igbo Language
Abstract
The literature of ethnicity in Africa indicates a major role for Christian missionaries in the creation of languages in Africa. It has been argued that certain African ethnic groups owe their existence to the ‘invention’ of their language by missionaries who created a written dialect—based on one or more vernacular(s)—into which they translated the Bible. This language came to be used for education in mission schools and later also in government schools. The Bible dialect consequently became the accepted standard language of the ethnic group and acquired the function of one of the group's prime identity markers.
In the case of the Igbo language, the history of the CMS missionaries' efforts at creating a written standard Igbo shows that the process was not always straightforward. The article describes the problematic process of creating a written language. The missionaries undertook continual attempts on the basis of several dialects, but it was half a century before they produced the first translation of the Bible. They complicated matters by working in different dialects, but eventually created a standard dialect which they named Union Ibo, a mixture based on several Igbo dialects.
The missionaries were also confronted with resistance from at least part of the Igbo population, who contested their choice of dialect. However, it appears that the majority of the Igbo were simply not interested. The Igbo population were far more interested in education in English, and although the CMS missionaries forced some vernacular education upon the people, actual interest remained limited. It is thus not surprising that the Bible language did not become the accepted standard language of the Igbo ethnic group. The spoken Igbo language does nevertheless function as one of the prime identity markers of the group. The article argues that the importance of the Igbo language to Igbo identity is partly the result of the missionary activity.
... However, in the course of translating the Bible into Igbo, these indigenous terms were not used to represent the concept; rather, new terms were coined and used instead and, overtime, spread and integrated into the language. Adopting the concept of language elaboration (Author 2018), this study investigates the motivation for this act and its impact on the Igbo language. The study is guided by the following questions: ...
... A model for Bible translation and language elaboration (afterAuthor 2018) ...
... The survey was conducted as part of a bigger project (seeAuthor 2018) and was aimed at exploring the spread of some lexical and conceptual innovations occasioned by Bible translation into Igbo. The present study focuses only on data supplied for the concept of virgin. ...
This study investigates how the translation of the word virgin in the Igbo Bible has expanded the Igbo lexicon and how this lexical enrichment has spread among Igbo speakers. Although prior to their encounter with the Christian missionaries in the 19th century and the subsequent translation of the Bible into Igbo, Igbo people had words that referred to virgin, these words were polysemous as they were also used for young and unmarried persons. In the course of translating the Bible into Igbo, the Christian missionaries transferred the Biblical euphemism for sex, “to know”, into the Igbo Bible and used same to innovate terms for virgin, thereby distinguishing a virgin from an unmarried or young person who might have had sex. Adapting the concept of language elaboration, this study analyses the lexical processes involved in creating these new terms. Then it presents findings from a questionnaire survey on the spread of the innovated terms among Igbo speakers. The survey findings demonstrate that the Biblical innovations have not only spread among Igbo speakers but also became a springboard for further lexical innovations. This study accentuates the impact of Bible translation in reshaping the Igbo language. It also reveals the involvement of the language users in the process of language change.
... Incidentally, Igbo has many dialects, some of which are not mutually intelligible, and this posed a serious challenge to the ministry's work. In order to subdue the challenge and forestall the need to produce translations in different Igbo dialects, the missionaries created a dialect of Igbo called Union Igbo which they hoped every Igbo speaker would understand (Bersselaar, 1997;Fulford, 2002). Union Igbo is an amalgam dialect that combined features of five non-contiguous dialects of Igbo. ...
This study investigates how the translation of the word ‘virgin’ in the Igbo Bible has expanded the Igbo lexicon and how this lexical enrichment has spread among Igbo speakers. Although prior to their encounter with Christian missionaries in the 19th century and the subsequent translation of the Bible into Igbo, Igbo people had words that referred to virgin, these words were polysemous as they were also used for young and unmarried persons. In the course of translating the Bible into Igbo, Christian missionaries transferred the biblical euphemism for sex, ‘to know’, into the Igbo Bible and used same to innovate terms for ‘virgin’, thereby distinguishing a virgin from an unmarried or young person who might have had sex. Adapting the concept of language elaboration, this study analyses the lexical processes involved in creating these new terms. Then it presents findings from a questionnaire survey on the spread of the innovated terms among Igbo speakers. The survey findings demonstrate that the biblical innovations have not only spread among Igbo speakers but also became a springboard for further lexical innovations. This article accentuates the impact of Bible translation in reshaping the Igbo language. It also reveals the involvement of the language users in the process of language change.
Igbo historiography has advanced since the publication of the epic narrative of Olaudah Equiano in 1789 and its different versions, especially that of Paul Edwards, a British literary historian in 1969. The main objective of this essay is to demonstrate the vitality and diversity of Igbo historical studies and provide informative and thoughtful interpretations of its strengths and weaknesses. In three parts, the essay examines the origin, dispersal, and settlement of the people; sociopolitical institutions and organization; economic systems, including slavery and the transatlantic slave trade, and the colonial economy; Igbo religion, Islam, Christianity, and Western education; colonial encounter; the Igbo in precolonial and modern Nigeria with focus on intergroup relations, ethnicity, and the Nigeria–Biafra War; and Igbo intellectual history. The essay makes a spirited critique of areas of overemphasis and the conceptual and methodological issues. It suggests important neglected themes that require further historical investigations. Its primary goal is to nudge Igbo historiography in new and challenging directions and inspire historians interested in Igbo studies to adopt a historiographical approach that emphasizes currency, relevance, and usability.
Most rural–urban migrants maintain significant ties with their communities of origin in Africa south of the Sahara. Contrary to “modernist” assumptions that these ties would fade away, they often continue to be strong. This urban–rural connection has important consequences for rural–urban migration, for urban–rural return migration, for the rural economy, and for the political process. To understand the processes underpinning the urban–rural connection we need to distinguish different migration strategies and to deconstruct the notion of “rural.” Depending on their migration strategies, urban residents connect with a range of actors at the rural end: more or less closely related kin, kinship groups, non-kin groups, villages, larger political entities. These connections play out differently for men and women.
Igboland, which is geographically located in the Southeastern part of Nigeria, was the last part of the country to witness the advent of Islam. This was owing to the fact that the people there are predominantly Christian and adherents of African traditional religions. Notwithstanding, Islam spread to the region in the nineteenth century and has since been earning itself new adherents among the local people. However, there has not been a systematic study of the spread, growth and development so far of the religion among the Igbo people; these adherents are a minority for whom the religion is alien. The purpose of this article is to trace the historical development of the religion in the region by identifying the factors instrumental to its spread as well as identifying the initiatives of the early Muslims. The significance of such a historical analysis lies in its potential to provide some new insight into how a minority survives with their religious persuasion in the face of majority adherents of dominant faiths. The article employs a combination of the historical and the analytical methods and concludes that with appropriate da'wah machineries in place, Islam stands a good chance of becoming the religion of the majority of the Igbo people.
This article examines the history of efforts to create a standard written language in western Kenya. In the 1940s, the Luyia Language Committee worked to standardise one Luyia language out of a set of diverse, distinct, and yet mutually intelligible linguistic cultures. While missionaries worked to imbue translations with ideals of Christian discipline, domestic virtue, and civilisation, local cultural entrepreneurs took up linguistic work to debate morality, to further their political agendas, and to unite their constituents. Rather than subsume linguistic difference, these efforts at standardisation reveal the dynamism of oral communities, and how they encouraged a culture of competitive linguistic work. Examination of these efforts challenges previous historians' insistence on the role of linguistic consolidation in the making and unmaking of political communities in colonial Africa.
Before the civil war, conversion to Islam for Igbo men resident in the predominantly Hausa city of Kano in northern Nigeria usually meant becoming Hausa. More recent converts, however, have retained their Igbo identity and created an organisation, the Igbo Muslim Community. Three case studies from the first group detail the process and criteria of becoming Hausa, including immersion in Hausa economic and social networks; three case studies from the second group demonstrate that, while Hausa-centred networks remain important, converts have worked to construct new, Igbo-centred support structures. The watershed in the changing relationship between religious and ethnic affiliation for Igbo converts is the end of the war in 1970 and resultant changes in Igbo perceptions of Muslims, and changes in Igbo community structures.
Depuis les années 60, les chercheurs soulignent l'importance constante des liens entre la ville et la campagne dans le processus d'urbanisation en Afrique. II est clair que depuis cette période les liens que les citadins entretiennent avec leur village natal ont augmenté dans de nombreuses régions d'Afrique. Quatre articles publiés dans ce numéro sont des papiers qui ont été présentés devant deux commissions ASA (à Toronto en 1994) chargées d'étudier ces liens entre la ville et la campagne. Le contenu des échanges et la part morale jouée par les citadins et les villageois dans ces liens varient considérablement. Les conséquences de ces variations sont importantes quant aux différences régionales observées dans le domaine, par exemple, du développement de nouveaux modes de rapprochement ou de consolidation des réseaux ethniques. L'autre article (par Dickson Eyoh) évoque les conséquences des changements politiques récents dans ce domaine, thème également soulevé par les autres articles. Dans de nombreuses régions d'Afrique, la démocratisation semble susciter une obsession pour l'“autochtonie”, l'origine et l'appartenance. Le rôle croissant des associations élitaires comme substitut du pluripartisme politique donne aux rapports avec la campagne une importance vitale aux yeux des politiciens urbains. Le village, et plus généralement la région d'origine, revêt ainsi une nouvelle importance en tant que base politique nationale.
In this article the author discusses the history and actions of the Igbo community, primarily via their ‘home town unions or associations’ and more recently through the activities in the diaspora of the World Igbo Congress (WIC), both to establish their presence in their adopted countries throughout the world but also, and more importantly, to maintain links with ‘home town’ communities. This takes place especially via large and small‐scale economic ventures, including capital construction projects, local investments, and occasionally local recruitment for the international market, from ‘home towns’ (often small villages) in Eastern Nigeria. The first part of the paper discusses the socio‐economic activities that Igbo ‘home town unions’ are involved in, the second discusses the historical background to these unions, the third analyses their success and what future contributions such groups might have in a rapidly ‘globalising’ world economy.
The adoption of Christianity by Tswana people in southern Africa during the nineteenth century generally involved being inspired in some way by stories and ideas presented in the Bible, but the role of Christian scripture varied according to local and personal circumstances. Although European missionaries introduced Christianity to the Tswana, they had little control over the different ways that early Tswana converts perceived, adapted and proclaimed the new teaching. This was particularly true among western and northern Tswana in the mid-nineteenth century before the extension of colonial rule into the interior, as many Tswana communities remained largely intact and were able to accommodate Christianity on their own terms. Rather than being simply a European-made tool, the 'lefoko la Modimo' (word of God) was also an expression of Tswana beliefs and aspirations, composed not on passive objects of missionary evangelism, colonial rule or scholarly inquiry 'but on tablets of human hearts'.
The Union Ibo Bible was more or less the Bible for the Igbo people of southern Nigeria from 1909 to 1970. The creation of Thomas Dennis of the Church Missionary Society and his co-workers, it has been, since its first conception in 1905, a source of ongoing controversy: the development and unification of the Igbo language was at stake. This article re-examines the history of this Bible, its conception, translation and early reception, and argues that the source of its shortcomings lies deeper than the method of translation or the contemporary Igbo desire to learn English. The Union Bible is the product of the missionary conception, fleshed out by a comparison with the Yoruba, of a single Igbo people speaking a single language. The failure of that translation is the result of the premise consequent to this conception of the Igbo, namely that the Igbo language was ready to be 'united'.
This paper argues that the challenge of intercultural communication has often been overlooked in discussions of indigenous language literacy in Africa. The omission continues despite the fact that literacy practices in Africa have often served as a means of intercultural communication, especially among highly educated Africans. Proposals for the adoption of indigenous language literacy are not likely to succeed unless a policy is developed that deals with the problematic of intercultural communication. For maximum effectiveness, indigenous language literacy practices in Africa will have to involve a balance between vernacular, transcultural and intercultural literacy. This paper offers definitions for both intercultural literacy and transcultural literacy. It agues that exclusive vernacular literacy coupled with translation between vernacular languages will encourage language shift towards more powerful languages. By contrast, a practice of intercultural literacy will blunt the drift towards monoculturalism, while transcultural literacy will enhance recovery of local agency over African textual production.
While Uganda includes speakers of widely diverse Sudanic, Nilotic and Bantu languages, none of the languages is spoken by more than 20% of the population. Until recently, speakers of Luganda have constituted the largest 'minority'; these speakers possessed special political privileges during the British colonial period. The status of Luganda has been challenged in the 1990s by the emergence of Runyakitara, a language based on a combination of the western Uganda lacustrine languages of Runyankore, Runyoro, Rutoro and Rukiga. This paper discusses the construction of Runyakitara in the context of the current political situation in Uganda. Along with the role and status of indigenous languages,the functions and status of Swahiliand English are discussed. The reinvigoration of indigenous languages and the relative decline of Swahili in Uganda are shown to be related to the power and solidarity of functions that these languages fulfil in society.
Although a missionary once served as president of the Royal Anthropological Institute, anthropological enculturation commonly includes categorizing missionaries as enemies. The conditioning seems to be more covert than overt, since anthropology texbooks seldom deal specifically with missionary activity and few ethnographies contain condemnations of missionaries. Two presuppositions which may influence the antimissionary attitude are (1) that the culture of a primitive society is an "organic unity" and (2) that religious beliefs are essentially meaningless. The organic-unity position conceives of a society as being almost a work of art in the way in which facets of culture are counterbalanced and interrelated. Since the missionary is usually involved in directed culture change, he is seen as doing violence to that "delicate machine," "functioning organism," or "intricate symbolic system." Social anthropologists tend to consider religious beliefs as essentially meaningless and argue that the major importance of religion is in the social relations involved in the rituals. It is therefore not surprising that anthropologists have a negative attitude toward those whose lives are committed to teaching people that the acceptance of specific religious beliefs is important. We should be concerned with the bases of the negative attitudes which many of us manifest, for an unwillingness to deal with them candidly will make it difficult to control for bias in field research.
There is evidence from across the disciplines that at least some of the contemporary regional names of African tribes, dialects and languages are fairly recent inventions in historical terms. This article offers some evidence from Zimbabwe to show that missionary linguistic politics were an important factor in this process. The South African linguist Clement Doke was brought in to resolve conflicts about the orthography of Shona. His Report on the Unification of the Shona Dialects (1931) shows how the language politics of the Christian denominations, which were also the factions within the umbrella organization the Southern Rhodesia Missionary Conference, contributed quite significantly to the creation and promotion of Zezuru, Karanga and Manyika as the main groupings of dialects in the central area which Doke later accommodated in a unified orthography of a unified language that was given the name Shona. While vocabulary from Ndau was to be incorporated, words from the Korekore group in the north were to be discouraged, and Kalanga in the West was allowed to be subsumed under Ndebele.
Writing about sixty years later, Ranger focusses more closely on the Manyika and takes his discussion to the 1940s, but he also mentions that the Rhodesian Front government of the 1960s and 1970s deliberately incited tribalism between the Shona and the Ndebele, while at the same time magnifying the differences between the regional divisions of the Shona, which were, in turn, played against one another as constituent clans. It would appear then that, for the indigenous Africans, the price of Christianity, Western education and a new perception of language unity was the creation of regional ethnic identities that were at least potentially antagonistic and open to political manipulation.
Through many decades of rather unnecessary intellectual justification, and as a result of the collective colonial experience through the churches, the schools and the workplaces, these imposed identities, and the myths and sentiments that are associated with them, have become fixed in the collective mind of Africa, and the modern nation states of the continent now seem to be stuck with them. Missionaries played a very significant role in creating this scenario because they were mainly responsible for fixing the ethnolinguistic maps of the African colonies during the early phase of European occupation. To a significant degree, these maps have remained intact and have continued to influence African research scholarship.
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