Early sources

This page lists all posts in the category 'Early sources' on The Ideophone.

‘Early sources’, as used here, refers to sources of linguistic and anthropological interest that are relatively old and often hard to come by. This includes early descriptions of African languages but also photos and text from missionary archives. One of the goals of The Ideophone is to make such sources freely available where possible.

Early sources on African ideophones, part IV: S.W. Koelle on Kanuri, 1854 [20090918]

Bingo! Refinding the oldest specimen of Siwu [20090810]

Scandalised missionaries and quite a new class of priests: some unforeseen effects of early missionary efforts in the Gold Coast [2008126]

Early sources on African ideophones, part III: ‘Onomatopoeia as a formative principle in the Negro languages’, 1886 [20080929]

Early sources on African ideophones, part II: Vidal on Yoruba, 1852 [20080815]

Kawu in January 1887 [2008072]

The mysteries of Christian doctrine, or, How an African language was mistaken for an Amazonian one [20080428]

Pfisterer on Akpafu, 1904 (part II) [20080130]

Pfisterer on Akpafu, 1904 (part I) [20080128]

Remnants of some ancient tribal idiom: deciphering the oldest Siwu to appear in print [20080117]

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Half-baked ideas, raw data, and sometimes a glimmer of insight. The Ideophone is a blog by Mark Dingemanse, PhD fellow in the Language and Cognition group at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics. Reach me at firstname.lastname@mpi.nl.

Kawu
Akpafu-Todzi, June 2007 Damit war auch die Frage nach einem passenden Ort für die Haupt-Station gelöst. Das schön, frei und gesund und doch nicht allzu hoch gelegene Akpafu, die zweitgrößte Stadt in Boem, war der geeignete Ort.

Andreas Pfisterer, 1904, on the place where I do fieldwork.