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Missionaries and the Standardisation of Vernacular Languages 5

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therefore, signalled cultural change, progress, and modernisation. However, this
cultural change and technological innovation inadvertently emphasized European
superiority. For example, missionaries reported that Africans looked bewildered
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by the written texts and photographs . In addition to the use of the translation in
evangelism, it is more certain that the print technology was used as a tool for
colonising people’s consciousness. Overall, this established European hegemony
21
over forms of knowledge and their transmission.
Another effect of translation work on African traditional societies can be
observed in the missionaries’ attempt at homogenising African languages and
culture. In general, missionaries sought to establish a relationship between
vernacular languages to support claims that African communities were tribes and
thus homogenous. This was later used to justify the homogenisation and
subsequently, the standardisation of African languages. For example, LM
missionaries believed that Tonga was ‘the particular language of the Tonga tribe
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who surrounded Bandawe [and that] it was allied to Chinyanja’. Further, they
thought that Ngoni was ‘a dialect spoken of the Zulu language’ and that Tumbuka
was ‘the language of the Tumbuka tribe which has been incorporated into the
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Ngoni tribe but had retained their own language.’ Out of all these languages, in
both DRCM and LM spheres of work, Chinyanja, Tumbuka and Yao emerged as
main languages. What follows is a discussion of the processes which affected this
and through which it was achieved.
At Cape Maclear, LM missionaries started learning Nyanja and
translating scripture into it because the Nyanja were friendly towards the mission,
in contrast with the Yao. By 1879 Robert Laws had published Nyanja Hymns.
However, most of his publications in Nyanja came after relocating the mission to
Bandawe (1880), a predominantly Tonga area. It was Laws who introduced
Chinyanja in the area, and it was still in use when A .C. Murray arrived at
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Bandawe (approximately eight years after the move from Cape Maclear). At
Bandawe, Laws conducted all teaching and preaching in Nyanja and, as a

19 Comaroff and Comaroff, Of Revelation and Revolution; Christianity, Colonialism, and
Consciousness in South Africa, 1:60.
20 Walter Angus Elmslie, Among the Wild Ngoni : Being Some Chapters in the History of
the Livingstonia Mission in British Central Africa (Edinburgh ; London : Oliphant
Anderson & Ferrier, 1899), 71; Comaroff and Comaroff, Of Revelation and Revolution;
Christianity, Colonialism, and Consciousness in South Africa, 1:188.
21 See Comaroff and Comaroff, Of Revelation and Revolution; Christianity, Colonialism,
and Consciousness in South Africa.
22 Livingstonia Manuscripts, “The Establishment and Evolution of the Livingstonia
Mission 1875-1900” (Edinburgh, 1964), 581, ACC 7548 76D National Library of
Scotland.
23 Livingstonia Manuscripts, 581.
24 A. C. Murray, Nyasaland En Mijne Ondervindingen Aldaar. (Amsterdam. 1897), 124.