75 Years of Writing in ShonaG. FortuneShona is the name which we use today to covera great number of related dialects spoken by peoplein Rhodesia, Botswana, Zambia, and Mozambique.The greater number of these dialects, and of theShona-speaking population, is found in Rhodesiaand it will be most convenient to describe thesituation there first, beginning with the centraldialects and moving afterwards to those on theperiphery of the Shona group. There is, first of all,the Zezuru cluster of dialects spoken aroundSalisbury in the districts of Salisbury, Goromonzi,Marandellas, Mrewa, Wedza, Charter, Buhera,Hartley, and Gatooma. These dialects includeShawasha spoken in the Chinamora Reserve andmade the basis for the literary work done fromChishawasha; Mbire, which seems to have beenthe basis of the work which issued from Waddi-love; Harava, the dialect of Seke and Chihota;Nohwe, the dialect of Mrewa; Hera, spoken inCharter and others. There is great similaritybetween the Zezuru dialects. The number ofspeakers of Zezuru dialects was estimated at188,000 in 1931* and at 1,001,000 in 1964**.The next cluster of central dialects is over theNyadzidzi river to the south, in the direction ofFort Victoria. These are referred to under thegeneral term of Karanga and they are spoken in thedistricts of Selukwe, Shabani, Chibi, Chilimanzi, aform akin to the Zezuru dialects; Duma and Jena,the forms on which the literary work at Morgensterwas based; and Mhari and Nyubi of Belingwe andGwanda. Karanga speakers were estimated atŁDoke, C. M., The Unification of the Shona Dialects.*S.R.C.C, Survey Report on Adult Literacy and Christian Literature in SouthernRhodesia.271,865 in 1931 and at 683,270 in 1964. Karangaspeakers were more numerous than Zezuru in1931 but in 1964 the numerical superiority seems tohave passed to Zezuru by over 300,000.The Manyika dialects centre on Umtali in thedistricts of Makoni, Inyanga, and Umtali, as well asin the Chimoio Districts of Mozambique. Thisgrouping also shows quite considerable diversityincluding such forms as Guta, the basis for theliterary work done at Penhalonga and Old Umtali;Teve, found in Chimoio; and the Inyanga dialects,including that of the Taangwena who have beenin the news recently, which show some affinitywith the Sena languages of Barwe, Tonga, andHwesa, spoken to the north-east of Rhodesia. TheManyika in Rhodesia were estimated at 86,000 in1931 and at 283,910 in 1954. It is not known howmany Manyika speakers are now in Mozambique.The Korekore dialects can be thought of ascentering on Mount Darwin, but they stretch in abroad arc from the Sengwa River in the west to theLwenya in the east. They are found in the districtsof Gokwe, Kariba, Urungwe, Lomagundi, Sipolilo,Darwin, parts of Bindura, Mrewa and Shamva, andin Mtoko. Gova and Tavara, both Korekore dialects,are found respectively in Zambia, between Chi-rundu and Kariba, and in the Tete district ofMozambique. No centre for literary work everdeveloped among the Korekore. It is known thatthere is considerable variety among the Korekoredialects. Some well-known dialects are Tande onthe Musengezi River; Budya around Mtoko andTavara. Korekore speakers in Rhodesia wereestimated at 135,291 in 1931 and those in Mozam-55bique at 35,000. In 1964 those in Rhodesia wereestimated to be 308,940.The Ndau cluster of dialects is found in the areabetween the Pungwe River to the north and theSabi River to the south; and between the moun-tains of Melsetter to the west and the sea to theeast. The speakers of Ndau are mainly in Mozam-bique, speaking the extensive dialects of Shanga,along the coast from Beira to the mouth of theSabi; and Danda, further inland. About a third ofthe people speaking Ndau dialects are in Rhodesiain the districts of Chipinga and Melsetter. There isconsiderable variety among these dialects too.The dialect called Ndau was used as the basis forthe literary work done at Mount Silinda. In 1931 theNdau in Rhodesia were estimated at 47,054; thosein Mozambique at 98,173. In 1964 the Ndau inRhodesia numbered 127,300.The final cluster of Shona dialects lies away tothe southwest and may be visualised as centringon Plumtree. The cluster name is Kalanga and thedialects are spoken in Botswana among theMangwato, and in Rhodesia in the Bulilima-Mangwe, Nyamandlovu, and Wankie districts. InKhama's country, where the dialect is calledLilima, the Shona are more numerous than theMangwato. Hwange, from whom the name Wankiederives, is the name of a chief whose subjectsspeak Nambia, a Kalanga dialect. Rozvi, thelanguage of the people of Mambo, once the rulerof a good deal of this country, and still spoken bysmall scattered groups in this country in placeslike Bikita and Wedza, is a Kalanga dialect. In 1931the Kalanga speakers in Rhodesia were estimatedat 44,746; those in Bechuanaland, 15,000. In 1964the numbers of Kalanga speakers stood at 64,330.The total number of Shona speakers was esti-mated at 974,996 in 1928, with those in Rhodesia799,619. In 1964 the total number of Shona speakersin Rhodesia was estimated at 2,468,850 and thenumber of Shona speakers in all parts, Rhodesia,Botswana, Mozambique, and Zambia, must be inthe region of 3,000,000. In Rhodesia they numberabout six times as many as the Ndebele, which isthe next largest language group in the country,and who numbered 132,600 in 1931 and 517,900 in1964. Ndebele divides the central, northern andeastern dialects of Shona from the western. BothShona and Ndebele are in contact with otherBantu languages on the borders of the country,some of which have penetrated quite deeply intothe country. In the north-west we have Tonga andDombe, in the north-east the Sena language calledTonga; in the south-east we have Hlengwe (aTsonga language) and Venda; and in the southand south-west, the Sotho languages of Birwa andTswana. In spite of this diversity, there are onlytwo official African languages in the country,Shona and Ndebele, the numbers of speakers ofthe other languages being relatively small.The terms I have used to indicate the clustersof dialects are Shona terms, but were given theirexact linguistic connotation by Professor C. M.Doke in his two studies published in 1931 entitled"A Report on the Unification of the Shona Dia-lects", and "A Comparative Study in ShonaPhonetics". The terms used for the local dialectsare Shona terms used by the people to indicatetheir different local dialects. As for the term Shona,which was chosen, after considerable discussion,to indicate the group of clusters as a whole, thiswas imposed from without and there is no certaintyhow the name arose, though it was probably froman Ndebele source. Its earliest appearance inprint, as far as I know, is in Hartmann's "Outline ofa Grammar of the Mashona Language", publishedin 1893. Its imposition bears witness to the factthat the Shona-speaking peoples had no aware-ness of their underlying linguistic unity, andindeed political units at the time when the countrywas settled under the British South Africa Com-pany were limited to the tribes whose names arethe names of the dialects of today, e.g. the Nohweunder Chief Mangwende and the Mbire underChief Svosve. There are historical records, how-ever, of a time when some of the Shona tribes, tothe north, formed a larger unity under the famousMonomotapa, and traditions of a kingdom underthe Rozvi Mambo to the south. Some of the firstShona words to appear in print are the names ofShona tribes and clans in early Portugueserecords, e.g. the Kingdom of "Maungo of whichMakone is king", which is present-day Hungwe inthe Rusape district, and whose chief is still calledMakoni, is mentioned as a vassal kingdom to theMonomotapa in the early seventeenth century byBocarro in his Decade. In 1635, the king of the coastof Sofala is called Quiteve by de Rezende in hisaccount "Of the state of India". Of him he says,"He was subject to the Monomotapa, but beingunder our protection he has almost come to refusehim any obedience." In 1609 the Dominican friar,56dos Santos, wrote a lively account of the Shona atSofala giving a number of Shona terms for Shonainstitutions which remain unchanged even today,e.g. ixe (ishe) for chief. In 1710 da Souza wrote ofthe famous kingdom of "Munhay" or "Mocrenga".The word Nyai is another term for Rozvi. Thus weknow that the Shona tribes have been in or neartheir present habitat for at least four hundred yearsand in all probability they have been there for agood deal longer.Swahili was the only Bantu language which wasput into writing by the speakers of the languagethemselves. They have been Muslim in faith sincethe early Middle Ages and they employed theArabic alphabet to write their own tongue. Theearliest Swahili manuscripts that have been pre-served date from the beginning of the eighteenthcentury. In other Bantu languages we have anumber of works published by missionaries whichappeared during the seventeenth and eighteenthcenturies, mainly in languages of the west coast.Of these the most famous is the grammaticalsketch of Kongo written in 1659 by the Italian friarBrusciotto. For our area we have a grammar of theNyungwe dialect of Sena, spoken at Tete, writtenin the seventeenth century, but for Shona noregular vocabulary earlier than 1854. In this year,the traveller Charles J. Andersson gave a paperbefore the Royal Geographical Society of Londonentitled "Explorations in South Africa, with Routefrom Walfisch Bay to Lake Ngami, and Ascent ofthe Tioge River". The paper contained vocabu-laries taken from Herero, Yei in the north ofBotswana, and a Shona language called Chyli-manse. Doke, who published the vocabulary inNADA for 1933, identified Chylimanse as Govera,spoken today in the Chilimanzi district, butinspection of the vocabulary seems to point furthernorth in the direction of the Inyanga dialects.There is a vocabulary of Ndau words which waspublished by Dr. W. H. I. Bleek in his Languages ofMozambique in 1856, under the name of Sofala.And a vocabulary of Shona is listed by Bleek inthe 1858 catalogue of the Grey Collection as amanuscript of 14 pages by Dr. Moffat, It is men-tioned by Cust in his Sketch of the Languages ofAfrica published in 1883. Unfortunately, thisvocabulary cannot be traced. The 1858 cataloguebears a comment in Bleek's handwriting to theeffect that it was promised by Dr. Moffat and Dr,Lewin Robinson fears that this shows it neverreached the South African Public Library.I have dealt at some length in the introduction tothis paper with the distribution of the clusters anddialects of Shona in order to show the extent of theShona-speaking area and its diversity and alsobecause it explains the beginnings of publishedwork in Shona which sprang up in a number ofdifferent centres unrelated to each other. TheShona dialects are no different in their diversityfrom the other Bantu languages. The three maingroups of Bantu languages in south-east Africa,viz. Nguni, Sotho, and Tsonga, show similardiversity. Among the Nguni, literary work startedindependently among the Zulu and the Xhosa;among the Sotho, three literary forms developed inSouthern Sotho, Tswana, and Northern Sotho orPedi. So it was not strange that there was inde-pendent work done in the beginning in Zezuru,Karanga, Ndau, and Manyika by the separatemissionary societies that had their centres in eachof these clusters.In 1893 and 1894 two small books exemplifyingZezuru were published in Cape Town by theRev. Father A. M. Hartmann, S.J., one of thechaplains to the Pioneer Column and after whomHartmann Hill is named. Though he called thepeople Mashona (referring to it as a term con-stantly applied to the people in his day), he calledthe language Chizwina. His books were An Outlineof a Grammar of the Mashona Language (1893) andan English-Mashona Dictionary with an appendixon some phrases. He states that the language hedescribes is spoken over a wide area aroundSalisbury. This area extends in a circle withSalisbury as centre and with a radius of about130 miles. He notes dialectal differences but callsthem verbal, not grammatical, and a number ofthem are of Tswana or Ndebele origin. His spellingseems strange to us today as he confuses manyvoiceless and voiced phonemes, confusing /ns/with /nz/, /nk/ with /ng/, /g/ with /k/, thusbetraying the influence of his German background.But his ear in other respects was remarkablyacute, for example in his treatment of the penulti-mate accent in phonological words, e.g. chimbitsa(hurry). He notes that the enclitic particles -ko,-ssu draw the accent forward,e.g. Uneyiko? (What have you got?)Wangauyassu? (Have they come?)57but that ka\ does not.e.g. ngombega! (an ox indeed!)As a result he used a system of word divisionremarkably close to our present-day practicewhich was based upon the principle of penultimateaccent in accordance with Doke's recommenda-tions. Doke believed that Bantu languages wereprovided with a word marker in the form of penulti-mate stress and that all one had to do to arrive at acorrect system of word division was to dividespeech into different pieces, each with a stress onthe last syllable but one. Hartmann's system ofspelling and word division was very different fromthatfollowed in works based on Ndau and Karanga.Another early work in Shona was W. A. Elliot'sDictionary of the Tebele and Shona Languages(London, 1897). Elliot had worked with the LondonMissionary Society for 14 years before publishingit. He refers to the dialect in which Hartmann'sworks were written as the Gomo dialect "with itsstrongly marked gutturals", (indeed the way Fr.Hartmann spelled Shona, e.g. gudshga for kudya(to eat) must have made it seem very guttural,whatever Elliot may have meant by that). Hisvocabularies and examples are taken from Kalangaand Karanga which made him more conscious thanFather Hartmann of the dialectal variation. Of hisown work he writes, "The present reduction towriting of the indigenous speech of Zambesia is anattempt to present a written basis for the Shunalanguage as a whole, from which the peculiaritiesof the different dialects may be observed." Elliotwas the first, it is believed, to attempt an ortho-graphy for the Shona group as a whole. Heappealed for help from the readers of his book forexamples and entries to compile "a really satis-factory dictionary of the language of the Mashuna."He appears never to have attempted this but didpublish in the early 1900's, Notes for a Dictionaryof the Sindebele Dictionary.John White, one of thefounders of the Methodistmission in Rhodesia, was also its chief worker inShona at the beginning. As early as 1898, theBritish and Foreign Bible Society had publishedhis Ivangeri ya Marako (Gospel of Mark) followedin 1901 by his Ivangeri ya Mateyu and in 1903 by hisIvangeri yekanyorwa na Johane. The whole NewTestament was published in 1907 entitled Testa-mente Itswa ya She wedu Jesu Kristu no rurimi rweChishona. There was a second edition in 1911 withreprints in 1914 and as late as 1951. Baba JohnWhite also produced a reader, hymn book, and acatechism in these early years in between 1902 and1910 and the Rev. A. Walton a translation ofGenesis in 1906.John White's spelling was a development ofFr. Hartmann's. There is a better distinction madebetween voiced and voiceless consonants thoughthe stem indicating "eat" is still spelled -dshga.His word division is slightly more disjunctive andanalytical, e.g. usapike no musoro wako. Thistendency was pushed further by the books pro-duced by the mission at Chishawasha, e.g. in thedictionary compiled by Fr. Beihler in 1906 entitledEnglish/Chiswina Dictionary of which furthereditions appeared in 1913,1927, and 1950. Here thedisjunctive and analytical tendency was carriedfurther and the morphemes making up the verbwere separated,e.g. va no tema mapango e chengoHartmann and White had used the Roman alphabetunchanged, relying on combinations of letters torender Shona phonemes and phoneme clusters.Beihler in an effort to render Shona phonologymore adequately, used diacritics in three cases.Hence two systems of writing Zezuru grew up, onefrom Waddilove and one from Chishawasha, andthe differences were evident in all their publica-tions, though the institutions were dealing withthe same dialect cluster and were situated in thesame area.The first books in the Karanga cluster were pub-lished by Lutheran missionaries published fromMiddleburg in the the then South African Republicand in Berlin. The spelling and word divisionshowed a marked Northern Sotho influence whichwas carried over into the first publications of theDutch Reformed Church at Morgenster. HereMessrs. J. T. Helm and A. A. Louw had completeda version of the New Testament by 1900 and theBritish Foreign Bible Society published in severalbooks almost the entire New Testament between1904-6. The two Louws, the Rev. A. A. Louw andhis wife, wrote most of the early publications inKaranga. Mrs. Louw compiled the two readersNgano and Shumo in 1903 and 1906 respectively,readers which are still in use. From 1909 the Sothoinfluence on the spelling decreased and in Mrs.Louw's Manual of the Chikaranga Language in1915, Karanga phonology received a reasonablyadequate treatment. She used the Roman alphabetand added a diacritic mark in the form of a bar,58under the letter in the case of five phonemes andover it in the case of one,e.g. vanu (people)Beihler had used /v/ to indicate the correspondingphoneme and /v/ for the phoneme for whichMrs. Louw used /v/. Hence Mrs. Louw's principlewas to use letters of the Roman alphabet un-changed for Karanga phonemes resembling thoseof English or Afrikaans and with diacritics with thenearest corresponding letter for those that weredifferent.In Ndau the first book to appear was a TshindaoPrimer published by the South African GeneralMission at Rusitu, Melsetter, and had beenprepared by the Rev. Douglas Wood. Missionariesof the South African General Mission collaboratedwith those of the American Board at Mount Silindain the publication of a Hymn Book in 1907 and of thefour Gospels in 1910. The principal workers werethe Rev. D. Wood (Matthew), Dr. G. A. Wilder(Mark and John), and J. E. Hatch (Luke). Theywere printed at the mission press at Chikore. Aftera fire had destroyed the press there in 1916, theBritish and Foreign Bible Society published arevised edition of the Ndau New Testament in1919. I am not certain of the orthography used inthis version of the New Testament, but it is likelyit was similar to the Karanga system being workedout by the Louws and which appears in Wilder'sChiNdau/English and English/ChiNdau Vocabu-lary published by the American Board Mission in1915. There was a move in 1908 and probablyearlier to print Ndau using special symbols of theInternational Phonetic Association by Dr. W. L.Thompson who brought up the proposal at theRhodesian Missionary Conference of that year.Weknowfrom a letter of his written to Dr. Lawrenceat Chikore that there was a growing dissatisfactionwith the multiplication of orthographies. He writesin a letter of 1910:"There has been a movement on foot to securea uniform orthography for the native dialects ofRhodesia and also of all S. Africa. The advan-tages of such a thing have been generallyadmitted (but I think not fully appreciated by anymeans) but the difficulty has been that everyman has his own scheme which he is unwillingto relinquish and in my opinion, most of theseschemes are based on very meagre knowledgeof the subject. The others will doubtless chargeme with being one of the rest. But I deny thecharge except with regard to such new soundsas are not found represented in the alphabet ofthe literary world. I proposed at the RhodesianMissionary Conference in 1908 that the Con-ference adopt as a basis for a uniform ortho-graphy, the alfabet of the International PhoneticAssociation. Now I hold to this, not because it ismy own proposition but I made the propositionbecause, in so doing, we would all be waivingour immature, rash conclusions (or our indivi-dual conclusions, however goodŠI do notpersonally approve of this alfabet in all respects,by any means) for the conclusions of the highestauthority on the subject. That some such actionas this is the only possible way to arrive atuniformity should be evident to anyone whoknows anything of the history of phonetics. TheConference discarded my proposal very courte-ously ..." (Letter dated Mi Silinda, Feb. 26,1910).Dr. Thomson was looked on as something of anunbalanced fanatic whose views were quiteunpractical. He went on campaigning for his viewslong after they had been rejected by his colleaguesand the S.R. Missionary Conference pleading forthe use of distinctive symbols for the Shonaphonemes. He published an article in NADA in1927 advocating the numerals 6 and 8 for /s/ and/z/ and 2 and 9 for the affricates /ts/ and /dz/,since those of the IPA were not available. Thomp-son and perhaps others of the American BoardMission were in touch with the developing world oflinguistics and Ndau was the only Shona dialectwhich reached the learned world. Thus we have ashort paper in 1911 on the Pronunciation andorthography of the Chindau Language by ProfessorDaniel Jones of University College, London, whichwas the result of a visit from Dr. Thompson andone Simbina Nkomo to the great man who inspiredthe character of Professor Higgins in Shaw'sPygmalion. The American linguist and ethnologistFranz Boas published papers on Ndau phonetics,kinship and folklore in 1920, 1922, and 1923, usingC. Kamba Simango as informant, a Ndau who hadbeen sent to America by the American BoardMission. Boas' note in Ndau pronunciationappeared in Natalie Curtis' Songs and Tales fromthe Dark Continent recorded from the singing andthe sayings of C. Kamba Simango, Ndau tribe,P.E.A., and Madikane Cele, Zulu tribe, Natal.In Manyika we have three centres for publica-tions in the early years: Penhalonga, Old Umtali,59and Triashill. The S.P.C.K. were publishing forPenhalonga from as early as 1898, early workersthere being the Rev. D. R. Pelly and E. H. Etheridge.Pelly called the language Chino (probably chinhu)and Etheridge Chizwina. Etheridge had translatedthe Gospels and Acts into Manyika by 1905 asMavengeri ne Mabase e Wapostori. In 1908 thewhole of the New Testament was published asTestamente Itswa, the New Testament in Chiswina.Other writers in the Anglican church were E. W.Lloyd and Arthur Shearley Cripps, both membersof the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel.From Old Umtali there was an important publi-cation in 1905 in the form of A Handbook of Chi-karanga or the Language of Mashonaland, basedon the Manyika of Old Umtali by Mrs. H. E. Springer.She preferred not to use the term Chiswina asbeing offensive. She uses the Roman alphabetwithout any diacritics or special symbols, and theword division is similar to Hartmann's almost thesame as we have today.This was followed in 1911 by Father Buck'sDictionary with Notes on the Grammar of theMashona Language commonly called Chiswina.His orthography appears to be the same as inMrs. Springer's earlier work. Doke criticised it forits weakness in orthography but it is not clearwhy he singled out Fr. Buck's work for criticism, asall the Manyika publications use essentially thesame symbols and the same system of worddivision. If anything, Buch's system is moreadequate than Springer's and nearer what we havetoday.cp. munu (person) Springermunhu (person) Buckmunhu (person) Standard ShonaEach of the three centres produced a number ofreaders and devotional books, Triashill included.One of the best sources of Hungwe forms is aninteresting publication in 1928 entitled Easy Englishfor Natives in Rhodesia by Fr. F. Mayr of Triashill.Kalanga deserves just a brief mention. It ap-peared in the early vocabularies of Weale andElliot and all subsequent work, not very volu-minous, has been the work of the Rev. J. Whitesideof the London Missionary Society.Thus far my paper has been on the diversity bothbetween the clusters of Shona dialects and theunco-ordinated literary work which sprang up inthe different dialects at the headquarters of thedifferent missionary societies: Waddilove andChishawasha in the Zezuru cluster; Morgenster inthe Karanga cluster; Mount Silinda in the Ndaucluster; and Penhalonga, Old Umtali, and Triashillin the Manyika cluster. The main institution work-ing for a common orthography at this time was theSouthern Rhodesian Missionary Conference, thefirst meeting of which took place in 1903, thesecond in 1905, the third in 1906. Ever since thenthe Conference has met pretty regularly every twoyears and its proceedings are a most interestingand valuable record of the issues that have arisenin this country. There was a discussion on theShona language at the very first meeting in 1903;at the 1905 meeting Rev. A. A. Louwreada paper onthe language. In 1906 Dr. Wilder read a paper on auniform orthography in the Shona language. ThisConference passed a resolution that the Britishand Foreign Bible Society should be approachedfor financial assistance to enable a committee ofcompetent men to meet at some convenientcentre to secure a translation that could be usedin all dialects of Mashonaland and thus obviatethe expense of preparing the Bible in differentdialects. The need for a common version of theScriptures was often voiced. This required agree-ment upon a number of things upon which itproved difficult to secure agreement. Choice ofShona terms for Biblical themes upon which therehad been theological difference as well as thechoice of an alphabet and system of word division.By 1910 there were four versions of the NewTestament in being, in Karanga, Manyika, Zezuru,and Ndau.In 1913 the Rev. Neville Jones proposed that theConference should set up committees for thecompiling of vernacular readers, one for Mashona-land and the other for Matabeleland, and thatGovernment help should be secured in theirpreparation and publication. In 1915 the questionof the translation of the scriptures in one commonversion was gone into by a committee consistingof Dr. Wilder, Mr. Louw, and John White, togetherwith a representative of the British and ForeignBible Society, and the Conference recommendedall missions working among the Mashonalandtribes to hold a conference, "together with onenative from each of the language districts". In 1920the Rev. Louw reported that having found that thetranslation in its new form would not be acceptableto any of the missions concerned, "we regret todeclare the project impracticable under present60circumstances and that therefore the matter bedropped for the present". The question was toobig for the missions at that stage.Two other factors come upon the scene at thistime as we learn from the Conference Report of1928 and a remarkably able paper by Mrs. C. S.Louw reporting a new interest by Government inthe value of the vernacular in education. The twofactors were (a) GovernmentŠin the persons ofthe Colonial Secretary, the Hon. Mr. Leggatt, andthe Director of Education, Mr. L. M. FogginŠand(b) science, as represented by the newly formedInternational Institute for African Languages andCultures. It appeared that the Government wereprepared to sponsorthe production of books in thevernacular for the early years in education if themissions could agree on a common languagesuitable to the needs of the different Mashonatribes. Now they had just attempted to make acommon language and that had failed."Since ten years ago an attempt was made bysome of us at the request of the B.F.B.S. to finda common dialect for a Union translation of theBible. Certain portions of the Gospels weretranslated by each of the societies concernedand the common forms and terms used to makea kind of Esperanto for Mashonaland. The resultafter much pains and trouble was then circulatedand found acceptable to none of the societiesconcerned, being condemned especially by theirNative Christian teachers. It became evidentthat a lingua franca or esperanto could not bemanufactured."So what was to be done? Mrs. Louw thought theGovernment should recognize the two mainclusters, Zezuru and Karanga. Many presentinsisted there was only one language in Mashona-land though it needed the help of Government andthe aid of the International Institute to standardiseit. The final motion combined both views. Proposedby Rev. A, A. Louw and seconded by Fr. D. Shrop-shire, it stated: "This Conference finds itselfunable to decide at present between the alternativeof standardising two dialects for Mashonaland,viz. Chizezuru and Chikaranga, or of standardisinga unified language built on all the four existingdialects. We therefore prefer to reserve our opinionuntil expert advice has been obtained. We wouldrespectfully request the Government to approachthe International Institute of African Languagesand Cultures with a view to obtaining a suitableexpert to investigate and advise upon the matter."The result of this motion was that ProfessorC. M. Doke, professor of Bantu Languages at theUniversity of the Witwatersrand, was approachedto undertake the work. He secured a TravellingScholarship for Research from the CarnegieCorporation and arrived in Salisbury to begin thework at the end of January, 1929. The purpose ofhis visit was to make a thorough study of thelanguage position throughout the country with aview to advising the Government upon a uniformorthography and a possible unification of dialectsfor the standardisation of an official language forthat part of Rhodesia inhabited by the Shona-speaking peoples. The Government had appointeda Language Committee to work with ProfessorDoke consisting of the Rev. B. H. Barnes, C.R., asChairman, and to represent Manyika, Mrs. C. S.Louw to represent Karanga, and the Rev. A.Burbridge, S.J., to represent Zezuru.A Conference of Native Commissioners held inSalisbury in 1927 had also dealt with this questionbut, as Mr. Bazeley put it, it was one of the humblermotions. Mr. Bazeley complained that there was nouniform system of writing Shona, in particularShona names and that this needlessly complicatedthe work of registration. The existing grammarswere of no help as they were too complicated andmoreover were inconsistent. He proposed that theGovernment should charge a committee of threeNative Commissioners to produce a simplesystem.Mr. Bullock spoke in favour of the application tothe problem of spelling Shona of the systemproposed by the International African Institute.He wanted the Minister of Native Affairs to investi-gate the proposed system of the InternationalInstitute and its applicability to Shona. He men-tioned that the Africa alphabet, as it was called,had a battery of 12 special symbols, in addition tothose of the Roman alphabet, to cover the specialneeds of African languages. Mr. Neilsen spokeout strongly against the Africa alphabet and spe-cial symbols, quoting the example of the mission-aries in Zululand who had used the Roman letters/c, q, and x/ to indicate the three clicks in Zuluquite adequately. He pleaded for a simple ortho-graphy and recommended that of the ShonaTestament. Mr. Bazeley was also against specialsymbols. In the end the Native Commissioners,61hoping for the best, passed both proposalsŠMr. Bazeley's and Mr. Bullock's.In their work, Doke and the Language Committeebased themselves on the Africa alphabet. There isno time to describe all Doke's findings and recom-mendations. Some of his findings have been out-lined in the introduction to this paper and are nowcommon knowledge, though they were not then.After his survey, Doke was able to recommend analphabet which would cover all the dialects ofShona and which included eight special symbolsin addition to the familiar Roman letters, viz. -6,d. ?, i, V, rj,/, 3/. He also recommended a commonsystem of word division based on the priniciple ofpenultimate stress. His two principles can besummed up then as follows:1. One sound one symbol (this does not quitemean one phoneme one symbol, as Dokewas a phonetician and does not seem tohave grapsed the principle of the phonemewhich was coming to be accepted in lin-quistics and was described in the Inter-national Institute's pamphlet).2. One stress one word. (This principle givesus quite a satisfactory system of division,though it does not reveal the grammaticalsystems in the way Doke claimed it did.)To these two principles, Fr. Barnes added anotherregarding the lexicon:3. Unify the orthography and pool the voca-bularies.The way towards a common written languageshould not be to select one of the spoken dialectsand make it the basis of the literary language, butto have a common dictionary contributed to by allthe dialects. As he wrote in an article in NADA for1928, "A Campaign against Babel":"Books for use in school will use the commonorthography, and will draw their words from thedictionary, the common pool. Here in Manyika-land we shall, of course, prefer Manyika words,but we shall not be limited to them and we shallfind other words in the dictionary. We shallgradually learn some of these other words, andmay find it useful to use them as alternatives.We shall take up a book printed for another areaand it will not repel us at once by its unfamiliarity,because it will be printed in the common ortho-graphy. We shall be able to read it straight off,very likely reading it with a Manyika accent, butanyway actually reading it. We shall find strangewords, but they will not remain strange for wecan look them up in our common dictionary andfind out what they stand for in our own dialect.In a generation or two, we shall have advancedperceptibly towards a common language, notby the road of conquest, but by the better road ofpeaceful interpenetration."These were the three principles adopted byDoke. With regard to the last, Barnes himself triedto contribute towards unification in his excellentlittle Vocabulary of the Dialects of Mashonaland,published by the Sheldon Press in 1932. Hissolution tried to be fair to all groups and to enrollall in the task of working out a common literarylanguage, but he probably ascribed too muchpower to the dictionary which was not compiledanyway until 1959.With regard to the grammatical constructions tobe allowed in the new literary language, Doke askedthat a unified grammar be standardised on thebasis of Karanga and Zezuru. It is probably thatDoke meant this grammar to be prescriptive andthat the literature of the future should conform tothe constructions allowed by it. Thus, e.g. herecommends that the Korekore forms of the prefixof class 13, viz. [hu-/xu-] be not allowed. Byimplication he would rule out the use of theManyika adverbial formative /nge-/, etc. He hopedthat the new standardised literary language wouldbe vigorously initiated by a permanent AdvisoryCommittee headed by a language expert to super-vise new readers and school text books and guidethe development of a Shona literature programme.There was no one who was prepared to compile theGrammar Doke called for until the Rev. J. O'Neil,who had written a manual in Ndebele some yearsbefore, was prevailed upon to do so. He produceda manual in Zezuru designed to teach the languageto Europeans and based very largely on thecategories of Latin grammar. Notes on Karangaand Manyika forms were contributed by FatherBarnes and the Rev. A. A. Louw.The Southern Rhodesian Missionary Conferenceof 1930 gave cautious approval to Doke's proposalsbut requested that the eight special symbols becut to four, and that the transition from the oldto the new regime be very gradual. A committeeconsisting of Fr. B. H. Barnes, C.R., Fr. J. Seed,S.J., John White, and F. R. Dixon, together with62the Rev, A. A. Louw, was appointed to prepare fora union translation of the Bible.In 1931 the Government approved the neworthography but limited the special symbols tosix, the enlarged committee to which the questionwas referred judging that the digraphs sh and zhfrom the Roman alphabet were quite adequate torepresent the Shona phonemes ///,/and /3/.Some strong feelings were roused by Doke'srecommendations. Fr. Martindale, who visited thecountry at this time, wrote in his African Angelus,"Outside a small group who professedly cared fornothing save the convenience of the white official,I could find only one out of all those whom Iquestioned, to speak of this system withoutblasphemy." This was an unfair comment butrepresentative of the feeling generated. The systemwas adopted for the Department of Native Develop-ment and was backed strongly by its director, HeliJowitt. He was a convinced believer in the value ofteaching through the vernacular in primary educa-tion. The Missionary Conference was happy toleave the union translation of the Bible mainly toRev, Louw. The mission presses too accepted thesystem loyally and produced a number of readersand other works in the new orthography as it wascalled. We have an interesting series of memo-randa from Fr. H. Buck of Penhalonga to theAnglican Diocesan Translation Committee whichgive some insight into the adaptations which hadto be made in Manyika publications. However, therest of the country did not seem disposed toaccept the new system. In an article contributed byFr. Barnes to NADA in 1934, entitled "The Pro-gress of the New Orthography", he raised thesomewhat delicate topic of the acceptance of thenew orthography by the Native Affairs Depart-ment, He writes, "I should not dare to suggest tothe older officials that they must learn the newtricks and perform them themselves, but I dosuggest that they need not be afraid to encouragethe younger men who are coming on to study thesounds of the native speech and to endeavourboth in speaking and in writing to reproduce themas accurately as can be done." He ends there andthis is almost the final contribution of Fr. Barnes,"The facts are given here (viz. the contribution ofthe Government to the whole work involved inintroducing the new orthography) to show thatthe Government of Southern Rhodesia hascommitted itself to this orthographic reform,always, of course, subject to the verdict of thecourt of final appeal, which in the last resort is theNative population of the next generation or two. Ifthey have no use for the new letters they willundoubtedly disappear. What's the betting?"The attitude of the Native Affairs Departmentwas expressed in a letter from Dr. G. MartinHuggins, Minister for Native Affairs, to Fr. Barneson the 22nd February, 1935: "There is no questionof introducing the new orthography into theNative Affairs Department. The very numerousyoung officials in that Department have passedtheir Native Language Examination already andthey have far too much to do to expect them topass another one. That is the only difficulty I seein the matter; how and when can this new ortho-graphy be introduced into the Native AffairsDepartment."In 1938 and 1942 we have motions on Ndebeleand Shona passed by a body called the NativeMissionary Conference, composed of Africansand meeting at the same time as the SouthernRhodesian Missionary Conference. The Africansshow an increased desire to be consulted in theorthography and publications in their ownlanguages.In 1941 Rev. Louw's translation of the NewTestament was published by the British andForeign Bible Society. He had made some effortstowards unification (the title: Testamente itsayeShe wedu Jesu Kristu is evidence of that), butthe version was essentially a Karanga one asindeed he had been encouraged to make it. It wasreceived with a certain amount of reserve, particu-larly in the Manyika area. Fr. Baker considered theclaim that it was Union Shona misleading to saythe least. Fr. Buck tested the first two pages ofLouw's New Testament with a team consistingof a Mukaranga, a Muzezuru, a Mumanyikaand Muhungwe and a Mundau and they hadjudged that some 40 alterations would be neces-sary in the first two pages alone if it was to beunderstood by the greatest number of people ineach of the areas. An exchange of letters betweenthese two friends, both so anxious to put the wordof God clearly before all the people and to developthe language in a literary sense, shows theirdifferent attitude. Rev. Louw stated that in allefforts at unification of which he had knowledge,the principle had been to take one dialect as thebasis and work the others in where possible and63practicable. This in fact was the principle onwhich he had worked which he had made clear tothe British and Foreign Bible Society and on whichthey had accepted the manuscript of the New aswell as of the Old Testament. He had tried theother way but without success. A translation hehad made of the first eight chapters of Markwhich attempted to treat the dialects on a par hadnot been acceptable anywhere. He had discoveredthen that a common language constructed arti-ficially in the way he had done was a still-bornthing and would never succeed. Further, difficultieshad come up over religious terminology.Father Buck sums up his methods in a letter toRev. Louw of 1946:"The method which our Diocesan TranslationCommittee has been following is to try and get atranslation which will be understood by thegreatest number of people throughout Mashona-land as the people from the different dialectalareas make each other understand now whenthey meet. To do this we meet round a table withAfricans who are natives of the three chiefdialectal areas, Karange, Zezuru and Manyika,who can vouch for what would be understoodin their own areas, and go through a previouslyprepared translation."About 1946 there is the beginning of a turn ofopinion against the new orthography. A motion inthe Southern Rhodesian Missionary Conference ofthat year set up a committee of European andAfrican missionaries to investigate how the neworthographies for Shona and Ndebele could bemodified so as to facilitate their use and thiscommittee was to report to the Executive. Thismotion came as the result of critical papers byFr. Baker, Fr. Buck's successor on the DiocesanTranslation Committee and the Reverends Stan-lake Samkange and Tennyson Hlabangana. TheDirector of the Native Education Department,Mr. J. Farquhar, voiced his criticism in an article inNADA entitled "A Mass Literary Campaign forS. Rhodesia." His first point was that UnifiedShona is a creation from above and from outside.It was the work of phoneticians eager to apply therule of the I.P.A. of one symbol, one sound. It wasnotthe result of an indigenous development. Therewas a strong desire to introduce the Roman alpha-bet to simplify printing, reading and writing.Mr. Farquhar was not the champion of the valueof the mother tongue in early education that hispredecessor, Mr. Jowitt, had been. English shouldbe the language of education. The African childrenin Southern Rhodesia would continue to speaktheir vernacular out of school and learn English inschool and gradually English would become thelingua franca and the vernaculars might die outwithout serious loss to the Africans, as far as theirlanguage is concerned, and to their distinct advan-tage in opening up the whole world of knowledgeto them. He was prepared to allow the mothertongue in the first two grades only as the mediumof instruction; after that some small provision forvernacular reading and writing.In spite of this feeling, the Southern RhodesianMissionary Conference reacted strongly in 1950 infavour of the Doke system and feeling stronglythat one common orthography for schools,Government and the press, was a fundamentalprerequisite for the growth and development ofShona as a literary language, requested theGovernment and the Bantu Press to accept theuse of the approved orthography. The reply ofAfrican Newspapers came in 1952 and was to theeffect that they were prepared to equip one fountwith the required extra symbols if the Governmentand everyone concerned would agree to onecommon orthography. The Secretary of NativeAffairs stated that outside educational circlesthere appeared to be very little support for the neworthography and sympathised with the missionsover the position they found themselves in. Sincemany issues were involved it was proposed toresuscitate the Language Committee or an Ad-visory Literature Committee in order that futurepolicy might have the careful attention it obviouslydeserved.I remember myself feeling at the time that thereshould be a return to the Roman alphabet if onlyto ensure a common system of spelling for Shonaby all who used itŠthe missions, Educationauthorities, Native Affairs, the Post Office and thePress. It was possible to buy typewriters fittedwith the six extra symbols and I still have mySmith-Corona which was equipped with them.But the great majority of people who worked inShona must have had to do without them. Moreimportant was the feeling that there was a need topromote a literature of a more general type inShona and there would never be a cheap andgenerous flow of this so long as it was hamperedby the requirements of a special orthography64which none of the commerical presses cared toobtain. Opinion as canvassed by the PublicationOfficer, Mr. D. Abraham, was in favour of a changeand I was happy to serve on an OrthographyCommittee called to meet in July 1954 and to urge,as I had urged in 1950 in a Foreword to a reprint ofBeihler's Dictionary, "If it is decided to abolishcertain of the special symbols of the 'New Ortho-graphy', then alternatives to these special symbolsŠeither by means of digraphs or some other moresatisfactory methodŠshould be explicitly providedand officially recognised". It seemed necessary tourge this in order to preserve in a more convenientform the essential distinctions which Doke hadpointed out should be made. For this I was takento task by Professor Doke who was tempted toprint a damning review of Beihler in AfricanStudies. But he generously desisted. In 'act mostof Doke's work survived the change from the 1931to the 1955 orthography and we continue to owehim an immense debt and the Shona were nolonger, as Fr. Martindale has expressed it in 1931,"sundered from the human race".Work on the revision of the Bible was begun atonce by Mr. Jackson, a labour on which he was toexpend himself devotedly until his death. The oldversion continued being printed, indeed anestimate made in the Southern Rhodesian Mission-are Conference in 1956 stated that 100,000 copieswould be needed up to the end of 1957. I think itis true to say that the changeover to an orthographybased on the Roman alphabet released a modestflood of publications of all kinds. The ShonaDictionary was published in 1959 after three yearsintensive work by Fr. Hannan and his assistant,Mr. Gumbo. There were grammars of Zezuru andKaranga published by Mr. Jackson and myself in1957; the commercial publishers entered thefield, a Literature Bureau was started, and mostimportant of all, African writers began to writeworks of a new kind which had never been seen inShona before.The problem that now faced Shona as a writtenlanguage was the form it should take. In a sensewe were no nearer a unified written language in1955 than we were in 1931, save for the importantsocial changes that had taken place in the countryand seem to have given the language of the capitala prestige value over that of the other districts andprobably a numerical advantage which apparentlyit did not have before. A system of spelling andword division common to all the Shona dialectsensures a potential reading public which is largerthan one which is possible if each dialect has itsown system. Thus Shona, thanks to people likeBarnes, Doke, Jowitt, and many others, escaped thefragmentation which befell the Nguni, Sotho, andTsonga clusters. But Shona still had to forge itsliterary language common to all Shona speakersjust as German is common to the speakers of themost diverse German dialects from the Dutchborder to Switzerland. The school readers pub-lished up to date have not set any definite modelsas they have been compiled as anthologies orcollections of extracts from each of the three mainclusters, sometimes chosen from earlier readersconfined to the area of a cluster. At least theyacquaint children with dialects other than theirown.The Literature Bureau which has publishedquite a creditable number of books at an economi-cal price and which appear to sell reasonablywell, has been more instrumental in developing astandard literary form. They have been written bypeople who have become familiar with the Shonaspoken in the developing centre of the countrywhich is acquiring a composite flavour of its own;or that spoken in the large training college insti-tutions, secondary schools, theological collegeswhich lie predominantly in the centre of thecountry, and even if they do not, draw studentsfrom all over the country. This undoubtedly is amore sophisticated form of Shona than thatspoken in the outlying areas and being also inconstant interaction with English and Westernliterature is able to serve as a more adequateinstrument for a modern Shona literature whichhas requirements of its own. I think this is plain ifwe compare modern Zezuru with, say, Korekore.The Bureau has also been at pains to edit themanuscripts submitted, standardising the gram-matical structure with a view to using forms whichhave the maximum currency in the country orwhich are unambiguous as written forms.About 25 to 30 short novels have been publishedin this country in Shona and Ndebele. Ndebeleincidentally has a much longer history than Shonain its written form and found its way into bookspublished by the London Missionary Society oncethe missionaries found that Zulu would not doentirely for the Ndebele. They are all short worksbut the writers show decided talent and a desire to65give Shona a new existence. A conference held atRanche House in 1965 on Creative Writing showedthe writers to be very aware of their responsibletask. Perhaps some comments on one or two ofthe books will be of interest.Feso by Solomon Mutswairo was the first to beproduced. It is a historical novel using a good dealof ethnography in order to paint a picture of thetraditional Zezuru life. To the discerning eye it isa parable at the same time with a good deal ofpertinent comment on the political situation.Nhoroondo dzokuwanana is an account of amarriage in which past and present are blended.His intention is to show that new customs shouldalso marry with the old, shapely and valuablesocial institutions in which marriage is symbolic-ally celebrated and enacted. He shows, forexample, what a great contribution the kin, bothof the bride and the bridegroom, have to maketowards the happiness and stability of the indivi-dual couple and the symbols by which theirinvolvement is expressed.Karikoga gumiremiseve by Patrick Chakaipa isanother example of historical fiction in which thehero is also a traditional figure in folklore. Histechnique in this book is reminiscent of the oldfilm serials with an adventure per chapter morethrilling than credible. His writing is noteworthyfor humour and graphic description and he hassustained and improved his performance in an-other four books since Karikoga.Nzvengamutsvairo by Bernard Chidzero. Wehave here the comparison and interaction of threecharactersŠa country wastrel, a townee, and aneducated Christian. The book is perhaps a parableon the responsibility of educated leaders towardstheir fellows. His writing is remarkable for thefelicity with which he uses the different registersof speech to portray different situations andrelationships.Kumazivandadzoka by J. Marangwanda is apowerful tale of the devastating effect of town lifein Salisbury upon a young boy who has run awayfrom home and the still more devastating effectupon his mother as he disowns her. Salisbury iscompared to the hill Kumazivandadzoka, infestedwith wild beasts where she lost her husband. Thecity, like Kumazivandadzoka, robs her of her son.Other titles and authors could be mentionedbut perhaps enough has been said to show thesort of thing which has been written. They are allinteresting, for each writer has his own individualstyle which is not cramped by the requirements ofstandardisation; and also for the attempt beingmade to make the language say something new ina new literary form which draws creatively on theforms common in oral literature, the proverbs,ideophones and metaphors of speech; and for thenecessary adaptation of the artist to a new type ofmedium and audience.There is a great need at this stage to compileanthologies of the oral literature in order to makeavailable authentic collections of the traditionalpraises, myths, stories with their songs, proverbs,children's word games and nursery rhymes. Theseare rapidly disappearing from use and memory,especially in the towns where the radio, television,sports and other forms of entertainment are takingthe place and time given to the traditional arts andwhere the traditional oral "classics" no longerfigure in the education of the young in a living,effectual way. All that many young Shona learntoday of their early literary heritage is what theyfind in the readers from which, necessarily, manyof the dramatic qualities specific to oral literatureare lacking. Most people show very little interest inthis indigenous literature but writers are beginningto see that new original and creative work inliterature can be done by transforming the oldforms and themes and thereby giving them a newexistence and a far wider audience.There is a great need for the new series of schoolreaders which is being contemplated at themomentto acquaintthe young both with the formsand registers of spoken art and their purely literarypossibilities, in a form of Shona which is modernand intelligible to all and which is alive with thevivid imagery and humour which comes so natur-ally to Shona when they speak and write.The Bible has figured largely in this account ofwriting in Shona and before I finish I shouldmention two versions of the New Testament whichwill undoubtedly have a great influence in thespreading of a standard form of Shona. The firstis Mr. Jackson's revision of Mr. Louw's translationof 1947 and the second is a new translation pub-lished last year by Fr. M. Hannan and a team ofassistants drawn from Zezuru, Karanga, andManyika. To some extent these two versionsembody the two methods advocated earlier by theRev. A. A. Louw, whose principle was to base theversion on one speech form, and Fr. Buck, who66sought to use the combined resources of several.The dilemma is still with us. Historically we knowit is the single speech form which has developedinto the national literary language, but this hastaken centuries. Fr. Hannan's success in producingsuch a clear and animated version from thecombined resources of three clusters shows thepossibilities of the second method. We cannotafford to wait for centuries. Shona and Ndebelewill have an ever increasing part to play in theeffort to develop all the resources of the country.In this multilingual country all the languages, andespecially all the official languages, have eachtheir important and complementary function. Onewould think that it is not only English but also theAfrican languages as well which will have to beused to harness all the energies of the people inthe urgent tasks of conservation and developmentsthat face the country as a whole. The leadershipwill have to become more bilingual than they arein order to transmit the new knowledge, directivesand incentives from one segment of society toanother, quickly, easily, accurately and effectively.In particular there must be a steady flow ofinformation out of the universities, researchcentres, government departments and othercentres of innovation into every part of society.This need is another force making for standardisa-tion and adaptation, for Shona to play its part in avery rapidly changing world.67