Explorers & agents · 1820–1902; in Sierra Leone 1847–53
Sigismund Wilhelm Koelle
Missionary linguist whose Polyglotta Africana and Vai grammar recorded the languages and testimony of the region.
Biography
Koelle interviewed liberated Africans in Freetown, recording vocabularies of over 150 languages in the Polyglotta Africana (1854) together with each informant's origin and the circumstances of their enslavement.
He also travelled to Cape Mount, met the surviving associates of Dualu Bukele, and published the first grammar and account of the Vai script.
Historical significance
The Polyglotta is simultaneously a linguistic atlas and a body of first-person testimony from enslaved people — one of the richest African sources of the century.
Timeline
- 1847Arrives in Sierra Leone for the Church Missionary Society
- 1849Investigates the Vai script at Cape Mount
- 1854Publishes Polyglotta Africana and the Vai grammar
Related entries
References
- Koelle, S. W. (1854). Polyglotta Africana.
- Hair, P. E. H. (1965). 'Koelle at Freetown: An Historical Introduction.'
Suggested reading
- Hair (1965).