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Missionaries and the Standardisation of Vernacular Languages 11

the select languages in mediating ethnic conflicts to achieve ethnic unity and
possibly nationalism.
Be that as it may, the success of the translation was contingent upon the
formulation of a written language. Consequently, Nyanja was transliterated using
the Roman script, with missionaries making critical decisions on its grammar and
orthography. The exercise of reducing Nyanja into its written form was hampered
by a number of problems, one of which was its presumed dialects. It was
discovered that Nyanja as spoken in one district varied slightly from that spoken
in another district. These dialectical differences led to endless disagreements
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amongst African informants on the basic meaning of words.
Nonetheless, the BM in Life and Work in British Central Africa downplayed
the concern that the multiplicity of Nyanja variants might hinder translation work.
They argued: for our own part we believe that diversity is smaller than is generally
supposed. If we class the Senna language as a variety of Nyanja – which we
believe it is – then, between the extremes on the west of the Nyasa waterway the
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difference is not greater than between Aberdeenshire and Ayrshire Scotch.
Thus, it was a worthwhile undertaking for the missions to aggregate the dialects
into a single tongue, as the lack thereof was hindering mission goals of extending
their reach to large groups of people. However, this suggests that missionaries
overlooked the ontological problematics and the resultant cultural impact of
classifying Sena with Nyanja.
In 1900, Hetherwick at the Nyasaland United Missionary Conference
suggested that missions should avoid the use of many dialects and instead promote
one dialect for large groups of people. For example, he proposed that, ‘the whole
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of Shire Valley and the west side of the Lake would be embraced by the Nyanja
and Tonga or Tumbuka languages. Literature in any of these languages would
reach a vast native population’. Furthermore, he emphasized that missionaries
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should collaborate on vernacular languages, which was embraced by the
Conference. Thus, the collaborative work of missions in reducing languages into
written forms played a critical role in consolidating Nyanja, Tumbuka and Yao as
main languages and ethnic groups in colonial Malawi. Consequently, different
languages were classified together because they shared several common words, in
order to create the common language.

51 Mvera Manuscripts, “A Common Chinyanja Bible”; Comaroff and Comaroff, Of
Revelation and Revolution; Christianity, Colonialism, and Consciousness in South Africa,
1:222–24.
52 Mvera Manuscripts, “A Common Chinyanja Bible.”
53 Livingstonia Manuscripts and Alexander Hetherwick, “The Nyasaland United
Missionary Conference Report of the Meeting Held at the Livingstonia Missionary
Institution. Christian Vernacular Literature.” (October 17, 1900), ACC 7548 71D
National Library of Scotland, Livingstonia.
54 Livingstonia Manuscripts and Hetherwick.