GRAMMATICA KIMBUNDU Heli Chatelain 1889 1st Angola Grammar - W J Holland Copy
POB#51169
TITLE: Kimbundu grammar; grammatica elementar do kimbundu ou lingua
AUTHOR: Héli Chatelain; Introduction by Robert Cust, Honorary Secretary of the Royal Asiatic Society.
PUBLISHER: Genebra [Geneva]: Typ. de Charles Schuchardt
DATE: 1888-89
EDITION: First Edition; Inscribed with Author's Address.
DESCRIPTION: xxiv, 172 p. 26 cm. An introduction in English. Other preliminaries in Portuguese. Vocabularies in Kimbundu, Portuguese, and English. Authors explicitly edit and update phrases from Catholic missals with a modern correction of 1642 translations then still in use (e.g. p.xx) .
CONDITION NOTES: ACCEPTABLE Complete work in original boards. Some pages shaky. Front cover detached and spine cloth detached. Toned edges, minimal spotting. Bookplate. Book is fragile, handle with care.
BINDING: Unprinted black cloth spine over original letterpress printed blue paper boards.
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PROVENANCE: Library of William Jacob Holland. Lightly inscribed to first fly page "Mr Heli Chatelain | [address]"
ASSOCIATION/AUTHOR AUTOGRAPH?: Association between author and W J Holland not established by my research, but likely given the known travels of W J Holland to Angola where Héli Chatelain ministered and studied the Kimbundu language. The faint inscription on the fly page may be an autograph by Mr. Chatelain, though it's not presented as such.
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Héli Chatelain (Murten, April 29, 1859 - Lausanne, July 22, 1908) was a Swiss Protestant linguist and missionary. He worked with the rural population in Angola, where he founded a mission and, in particular, fought against the slavery that still plagued the country in the 19th century.
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Rev William Jacob Holland FRSE LLD (August 16, 1848 – December 13, 1932) was the eighth Chancellor of the University of Pittsburgh (1891–1901) and Director of the Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh. He was an accomplished zoologist and paleontologist, as well as an ordained Presbyterian minister. Holland's main interest was in lepidoptery.
Holland was America's great popularizer of butterflies and moths in the first half of the twentieth century. Holland's The Butterfly Book (1898) and The Moth Book (1903) are both still widely used. Holland donated his private collection exceeding 250,000 specimens to the Carnegie Museum . He supported active collectors worldwide, obtaining major collections from previously uncollected regions between 1890 and 1930 through the efforts of William Doherty, Herbert Huntingdon Smith, H.L. Weber, J. Steinbach, S.M. Klages and many others.
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First analytical grammar of the Kimbundu language, later found to be a branch of the Bantu lingual family, spoken primarily in present day Angola.
An interesting 3 page introduction in English : Royal Asiatic Secretary Robert Cust describes Chatelain's book and the linguist's deft and then emerging analysis of Kimbundu. According to Cust, prior grammars and dictionaries of Kimbundu produced by Jesuit and Capuchin missionaries in 1697 and 1805 served necessary Bible translations, but lacked Heli Chatelain's modern analysis. Thus Grammatica Elementar represents Angola's first modern grammar.
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In his mission to study Kimbundu, Heli Chatelain was accompanied by the "late Dr. Summers" who died an untimely death conducting a "Self-Supporting Mission" under Bishop William Taylor. Robert Cust pointedly criticises the Bishop William Taylor who invented the "self supporting mission" concept and blames the Bishop for the death of Chatelain's clerical companion at the African jungle station where the work was done. The grammar is interpreted in Portuguese and the meaning of Kimbundu words given in Portuguese and English.
