Morrison, W. M. Grammar of the Buluba-Lulua Language as Spoken in the Upper Kasai and Congo Basin; Prepared for the American Presbyterian Congo Mission by W. M. Morrison, Missionary of the Southern Presbyterian Church in the Belgian Congo. Luebo, Congo Belge: J. Leighton Wilson Press, (1930). Revised Edition. [7742]
Peach cloth, titles in black to spine & front, spine a bit faded. some fraying to the corners & ends, about 6 x 8 3/4 inches. x., 189 clean pp., tight. Good. Hardcover.
The Preface to this Revised Edition is dated December 15, 1930, written from Mutoto, Congo Belge. The first edition was published in 1906.
"The Presbyterian Mission and its Press have made a profound impact on the language of Central Africa. The mission not only issued the first written works in the Tshiluba language [Buluba-Lulua], it issued these publications in a transliteration which is a technical masterpiece, faithfully executed by William M. Morrison. Morrison's lexicographical work received the highest praise from the renown linguist Torday who referred to his Tishluba dictionary as 'a masterpiece which renders all similar work useless.' And Morrison's Tshiluba Bible, and as revised by later Tshiluba language scholars, is considered the literary monument and standard of the language, as the King James Bible is in English or Martin Luther's Bible in German. When students of Tshibula seek to ascertain a correct usage or translation, they turn to the Tshiluba Bible as a resource and model." - Robert Benedetto, The Presbyterian Mission Press in Central Africa, 1890-1922 in American Presbyterians Vol 68, No. 1. (Spring, 1990) p. 63.
William McCutchan Morrison (1867-1918), b. near Lexington, Rockbridge Co., Virginia; d. Luebo, Congo. A missionary with the Presbyterian Church (South), he labored in the Belgian Congo as an evangelist and Bible translator. His writings exposed the abuses suffered by the natives at the hands of their colonial overlords.
