Language and Colonial Power: The Appropriation of Swahili in the Former Belgian Congo 1880-1938
Introduction
I compiled a register of two, three hundred basic words in the Russian language; these I had translated into as many languages and jargons as I could find. There are already more than two hundred of them. Every day I took one of those words and wrote it in all the languages I could get together . . . Only because I would eventually have regretted it had I burned this mass of paper . . . did I ask Professor [Peter Simon] Pallas to come and see me. After a thorough confession of my sin, we agreed to have these translations printed and thus make them useful to those who might have the desire to occupy themselves with the fruits of someone else's boredom . . . Those who are so inclined may or may not find some illumination in this effort. This will depend on their mental disposition and does not concern me at all.
This is how Catherine the Great, Empress of Russia, described the beginning of an ambitious linguistic undertaking: a monumental collection of vocabularies, and one of the first to include several Af ... read full excerpt from Language and Colonial Power: The Appropriation of Swahili in the Former Belgian Congo 1880-1938 ebook
