Morrison, W. M. Dictionary of the Tshiluba Language (Sometimes known as the Buluba-Lulua, or Luba-Lulua); Prepared for the American Presbyterian Congo Mission by W. M. Morrison, published in 1906. Revised and enlarged by a Committee of the Mission. Republished in 1939. Luebo, Belgian Congo: Printed and bound by the J. Leighton Wilson Press, 1941. [7641]
Red cloth, title in black on spine & front, 6 x 9 inches, black ink stamp on ffep "Emily Boehler, B. P. 117 Luluabourg, Republic of Congo (Leopoldville)". 134 + 176 pp., last few pp. roughly opened, some sections of paper wavy. Good. Hardcover.
Emily Boehler, American Presbyterian missionary in the Congo, 1947-1970.
"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. (7641)