Abstract
In this article, the oldest Bantu dictionary hitherto known is explored, that is the Vocabularium Latinum, Hispanicum, e Congense, handed down to us through a manuscript from 1652 by the Flemish Capuchin Joris van Gheel, missionary in the Kongo (present-day north-western Angola and the southern part of the Lower Congo Province of the DRC). The manuscript was heavily reworked by the Belgian Jesuits Joseph van Wing and Constant Penders, and published in 1928. Both works are currently being digitized, linked and added to an interlingual and multimedia database that revolves around Kikongo and the early history of the Kongo kingdom. In Sections 1 and 2 the origins of Bantu lexicography in general and of Kikongo metalexicography in particular are revisited. Sections 3 and 4 are devoted to a study of Van Gheel's manuscript and an analysis of Van Wing and Penders' rework. In Sections 5 and 6 translation equivalence and lexicographical structure in both dictionaries are scrutinized and compared. In Section 7, finally, all the material is brought together.
Highlights
BANTU, LATIN, SPANISH, FRENCH, FLEMISH, AUTHORSHIP, COMPILATION STRATEGY, LANGUAGE, DIALECT, ORTHOGRAPHY, BASE LETTERS, DIACRITICS, PHONETICS, PROTO-BANTU, TRANSLATION EQUIVALENCE, MEANING EXTENSIONS, PARAPHRASES, LOANWORDS, MISNAMINGS, RETRANSLATIONS, LEXICOGRAPHICAL STRUCTURE, MANUSCRIPT, DATABASE
Given Van Gheel's manuscript survives to this day, it is possible and even necessary to move the origin of the field back to 1652 or, writing in 2012, to state that the field of Bantu lexicography is 360 years old
His stay in Kongo was rather short, since he died on the 17th of December 1652, as a result of having been beaten by villagers for disrupting a ritual and destroying their ritual objects (Nsondé 1995: 127; Thornton 2011). It is during this short period that Van Gheel managed to pen a manuscript which includes, in addition to a number of spiritual and worldly texts appended to the front and back, the trilingual Vocabularium Latinum, Hispanicum, e Congense, the oldest surviving source of the Capuchin description of Kikongo
Summary
Reading through the recent literature on Bantu lexicography, it seems as if scholars agree that the field, half a century later, is just 150 years old. In support of his argument Benson starts by retracing the lexicographical efforts of "a pioneer in the field such as Krapf" Given Van Gheel's manuscript survives to this day, it is possible and even necessary to move the origin of the field back to 1652 or, writing in 2012, to state that the field of Bantu lexicography is (at least) 360 years old
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