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Poetry
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Quote Poetry Replybullet Topic: Hidden Gems in my Library - 1895 Zulu Dictionary
    Posted: 25 April 2007 at 8:39pm
Hi All,
I was looking up the FSI courses in the stacks, and found some really nice little finds.  I'm finding odd little treasures in the stacks. 
 
Like an English to Zulu dictionary written by the Rev. Charles Roberts, dated 1895, and it's the *second* edition.  It was printed in London, but I'd bet dollars to donuts that it's in the public domain now.  Rev. Roberts also wrote:  "The South-African Travellers' Handbook:  for the use of the Army and Navy,"  "The Zulu-Kafir Language Simplified for Beginners," and "Step-by-Step in Zulu."  Gotta tell you, my curiousity is just burning to see these.  Especially that Travellers' Handbook from 110 years ago. 
 
I was actually surprised to note that Zulu is a click language.  There are 3 distinct clicks made.  The alphabet is composed of 17 consonants, 5 vowels, 3 clicks, and a harsh guttural.  Rev Charles gives a wonderful description of the 3 clicks here that makes it pretty easy to discern them, but the harsh guttural is kinda just mentioned.  And there's a couple of syllables, hl and dhl, that he explains that there just isn't a 'satisfactory explanation' and would be best learned from a native but sound a bit like some of the Welsh sounds.  :-)
 
The original of this was written in 1880, so we were musing at home that it was composed and written sometime after the Boer War.  We think.  I'm not really up on British/European history anymore. 
 
But my point that I've strayed far from, is that there are a lot of things hiding in these stacks that are useful and mouldering.  And I've found that there's a ton of stuff that we have that is on microfiche.  There's another ancient book on Luganda, (the FSI course that I'm working on scanning off is Luganda), that's on microfiche.  I'm going to try later this summer when work is less hectic to meet with one of the librarians and talk to them about printing off these microfiche books and scanning them.  I'd rather be able to do it without incurring the typical printing cost which is high to prevent students from tying up the printers. 
 
I've been wondering if the US Government ever put out any books on any of our Indigenous Tribal languages.  If so, they'd probably have been done by the BIA (Bureau of Indian Affairs).  I have a couple of relatives in the distance who were Powahatan and Cree (we think).  It would be fun to look up those languages. 
 
--Poetry
 


Edited by Poetry - 29 April 2007 at 12:19am
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jcamins
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Quote jcamins Replybullet Posted: 28 April 2007 at 6:47pm
Poetry --

w.r.t. Indigenous Tribal languages, texts that are freely available with ERIC are:

ERIC #:ED365158
Title:Blackfoot for Beginners. Books 1, 2, and 3.
Authors:Tailfeathers, Esther

ERIC #:ED402744
Title:Guarani I and Work Book (For Peace Corps Volunteers).
Authors:

ERIC is a wonderful resource. I actually have a list of some... eighty freely available language resources on ERIC. And of course you can use ERIC to find resources that were printed but aren't available online. Although it only goes back to 1966.
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