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INTRODUCTION
THERE was pleasurable exoitement at the Bible House in
London when in 1930 the news came that Canon Apolo Kivebulaya
was translating the Gospel of St.Mark into the ’Mbuti’ language,
spoken by Pygmies of the Congo Forest. That translation is the
basis of the present tentative Grammar and of the Dictionary
which accompanies it.
1.
The 3tory of the heroic saint who is responsible for
this translation has been written by Archdeacon a.B.Lloyd.
Born in Uganda about 1864, Apolo was a pupil for a short time
of Alexander Mackay, but was not converted till later.
Soon after his baptism in 1895, he volunteered to serve as
an evangelist in Toro, some 200 miles to the west. There he
had to learn to express himself in the Nyoro tongue, but
appears never to have mastered it. Mr. Lloyd tells us that
"the rolling R and the aspirated H absolutely defeated Apolo,
and to the end of his days he had not an aspirate in ail his
vocabulary and a rolling R was never heard." While he was in
Apolo of the Pygmy Forest. C.M.S. 1936.
Apolo, the Pathfinder. C.M.8. |
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