1. INTRODUCTION

The Portuguese colonization of Angola, in western Africa, occurred between 1579, when the first Captain Governor of Angola, Paulo Dias de Novais (c. 1510–1589), conquered Luanda, and 1975, when the territory achieved its independence. The current borders of the Republic of Angola were only defined after the Berlin Conference (1884–1885), and encompass old kingdoms, specifically those of Kongo (northwestern Angola), Lunda and Matamba (northeastern), Ngola-Ndongo and Ovimbundu (central western), and Benguela (south). Angola has almost 50 national (indigenous) languages, and only Portuguese is recognized as the official one (see Eberhard, Simons & Fennig 2019).

According to the last census, which was performed in Angola in 2014 (Ceita & Machado 2016: 51), the six languages most spoken at home are Portuguese (71.15 %; 9,020,404 speakers), Umbundu (22.96 %; 5,449,819 speakers), Kikongo (8.24 %; 1,956,191 speakers), Kimbundu (7.82 %; 1,855,951 speakers), Chokwe (6.54 %; 1,553,019 speakers), and Nyaneka (3.42 %; 812,357 speakers). For the researchers of the Ethnologue (Eberhard, Simons & Fennig 2019), the national languages with more native speakers in the current territory of Angola are effectively: Umbundu (ca. 6,000,000 in Angola: west central, Huambo, Cuanza Sul, and Benguela provinces); Kikongo (ca. 2,000,000 in Angola: north, along the Congo river, Uíge, and Zaire provinces; northern Bengo and Malanje provinces; southern Cabinda and Cuanza Norte provinces); and Kimbundu (ca. 2,000,000 in Angola: northwest, Cuanza Norte, Bengo and Malanje and Luanda provinces). Nevertheless, Ethnologue researchers consider Cokwe and Lunda two different languages and, thus, Nyaneka has more native speakers (ca. 1,000,000 in Angola: southwest, mainly Huíla and Namibe provinces) than Cokwe (ca. 500,000 in Angola: northeast Lunda district; east Bié, west Moxico, and central Cuando Cubango, Cunene, Malanje, Lunda Sul, Lunda Norte) and Lunda (ca. 200,000 in Angola: northeast, Lunda Norte province: Caungula municipality; Moxico and Lunda Sul provinces) together (see Eberhard, Simons & Fennig 2019).

The languages most studied or described by the Portuguese during the colonial period (1570-1975) were, initially, Kimbundu, and more recently, Umbundu and Nyaneka. At the beginning of the Portuguese Discoveries, only Kikongo deserved real attention by missionaries of Portuguese Patronage, mainly in the 17^th century, but only Mattheus Cardoso’s (1584-1625) catechism (Lisboa, 1624), and Brugiotti da Vetralla’s (1601-1659) grammar (Roma 1659) are currently remaining (Fernandes 2015). The most relevant dictionary of Kikongo is the Dictionary and grammar of the Kongo Grammar (1886 with the 1895 appendix) compiled by the Baptist missionary William Holman Bentley (1855–1905), who was not a missionary from Portuguese Patronage. It was not until 1964 that the secular priest António da Silva Maia (1905-1981) published a dictionary comparing Kimbundu and Kikongo (Maia 1964).

It is important to highlight a few dates regarding the Portuguese religious history, which concern the expulsion, banishment, and restoration of the religious orders:

2. KIKONGO

In fact, the kingdom referred to as Congo was in what is currently northwestern Angola and the southern part of the Lower Congo Province of the Democratic Republic of Congo. M’Banza Congo, its “capital,” named by the Portuguese São Salvador do Congo, nowadays belongs to the Angolan province of Zaire in the Angolan northwest, and it is the headquarters of the Mbanza Kongo municipality (see Clist et al. 2015; Bostoen & De Schryver 2018). In the Italian National Library of Rome (Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale Vittorio Emanuele II), there is a manuscript of a Dictionary of Latin–Spanish–Kikongo titled Vocabularium Latinum, Hispanicum, et Congense ad usum Missionariorum transmittendorum ad regni Congi Missiones [Latin, Spanish and Congolese dictionary for the use of missionaries to be sent to the Kongo Missions] (Ms.Varia 274 of Fundo Minori 1896), which, according to John Thornton (2011), was discovered by the Belgian Capuchin Frédégand Callaey, O. F. M. Cap. (1885-1967), in 1912. It mentions two dates, 1651 (f. III v.) and 1652 ([Roboredo et al.] 1652 [1648]: IV v. & 138 v.), and starts with a note by Giacinto Brugiotti da Vetralla, O. F. M. Cap. (1601-1659), stating that this copy was written for his own use by Giorgio di Ghela, O. F. M. Cap., the Italian religious name of Adriaan Willems (1617-1652), who was killed in Kongo in 1652. In 1928, the Belgian Jesuits Joseph van Wing, S. J. (1884-1970), and Constant Penders, S. J. (1893-1985), published a new edition of this manuscript. They removed the Latin entries and Spanish translations, added French and Flemish translations (van Wing & Penders 1928: XVI), changed the order of the entries starting with the Kikongo words (Hildebrand 1940: 269), and modernized the orthography. In summary, it is a “misleading piece of work,” and “an entire new Congolese–French–Flemish work” (Zwartjes 2011: 297), or, as Clement Doke (1935: 96) stated, “such a method of handling the manuscript is the opposite of scientific.”

It is, as far as we know, the oldest extant Bantu dictionary, and was written in 1648 (see D’Alençon 1914; Buenaventura de Carrocera 1945; Buenaventura de Carrocera 1946; Bonvini 1996; De Kind 2012; De Kind, de Schryver, and Bostoen 2012; Bortolami 2012), by several Italian and Spanish Capuchins, led by the mestizo Portuguese–Congolese Manuel de Roboredo, a secular priest (later Francisco de São Salvador, O. F. M. Cap.) (d. 1665). The Fleming Adriaen Willems (later Joris van Gheel or, in Spanish, Jorge de Gela, O. F. M. Cap., 1617-1652) made a copy of this text in 1652. Giacinto Brugiotti da Vetralla sent this copy to the Archivio Provinciale dei Frati Minori Cappuccini [Friars Minor Capuchin Provincial Archives] in Rome in approximately 1657 (see Bontinck 1976; Bontinck 1980).

The manuscript has 121 folios, 241 pages, and circa 10,000 entries in Latin with their translation (mostly) into Spanish and Kikongo. It is based on Nebrija’s (1441-1522) Latin–Spanish dictionary, probably the 1581 edition, which had been printed in Antequera. It provides an ample portrayal of 17^th century Congolese society and culture, but it also registers an African and Congolese society that did not exist; one that was similar to European society, where the authors imagined, for instance, the existence of wardrobes, architects, libraries, book sellers, pharmacies, and vineyards. It sometimes presents Italian translations, instead of Spanish ones, and reveals the incorporation of Portuguese terms into Kikongo, such as “alface,” [lettuce] “cavalo,” [horse] “burro,” [donkey] “prata,” [silver]“bispo,” [bishop] and “tesouras” [scissors] (see Fernandes 2022).

3. KIMBUNDU

During the colonial period (1570-1975), Kimbundu had five main published dictionaries, three from the 19^th century and two from the 20^th century. The first known / ‘remaining’ dictionary of Kimbundu by missionaries under Portuguese Patronage was only published in 1804 by the Italian capuchin Bernardo Maria [Cassaro] da Canicattì, O. F. M. Cap (1749-1834). It received harsh criticism because it mixed three Angolan languages, at least, of African origin, such as Kimbundu, Kikongo, and Umbundu (Rosa 2019: 76-79). Saturnino de Souza e Oliveira precisely refers to his confusion regarding the words from the various languages spoken in the provinces of Kongo, Angola, and Benguela, but he also mentions the history of the Kimbundu language over the last 60 years:

In 1894, the Swiss Héli Chatelain (1851–1908) added that the Canicattì’s dictionary had several instances of “incorrectness, confused spelling, and erroneous renderings of words” and it “has never been of any use to students of Ki-mbundu.” (Chatelain 1894: 23). Canicattì was aware of his scientific limitations and the constraints of his metalinguistic work (Canicattì 1804: 5), but he was effectively the author of the first printed dictionary of any language spoken in Angola. The English Baptist Missionary William Holman Bentley (1855-1905), still one of the greatest linguistic authorities on Kikongo, and author of an English-Kikongo and Kikongo-English dictionary and a Grammar of Kikongo (still in use), dismissed these criticisms, and thanked Canicattì for his philological contributions, stating, for example, that, in effect “there are many mistakes, and many words which it is impossible to trace; but as he acknowledges his imperfect acquaintance with Kongo, and only gives his list as philological study, we must not criticize, but be thankful for his contribution.”(Bentley 1887: XII)

Saturnino de Souza e Oliveira (1820–1871), a Brazilian born in Coimbra, Portugal, who assumed the post of Consul-General of Brazil in Angola (Rosa 2020: 5), layman, Doctor, published a Kimbundu-Portuguese dictionary in Luanda in 1864, or, as Chatelain stated at the beginning of the publication:

Nevertheless, the cover refers to the fact that these leaves were the “únicas folhas que se publicaram” [unique pages that have been published]. The single copy currently belongs to the Library of Congress, in the USA, and it previously belonged to Héli Chatelain, as is confirmed on the manuscript flyleaves at the beginning. Less than 30 years after it was published, Cordeiro da Matta stated that the dictionary was little known and had just a few pages: the letter from A to Cuban; from “Ma” to “Nden”; and from “Zam” to “Cuzuku” (Matta 1893: XI).

Nowadays, even though it is the same copy, there are only 14 pages beyond the prologue (3 pages):

At the “prologo” [prologue], the author explains that he had used a manuscript written by an Angolan Kimbundu native speaker named João Vieira Carneiro, who was already dead. He adds that Carneiro had written about many historical and mythological ideas, which “tornão este trabalho curioso” (Oliveira 1864: [4]) [make this work curious].

He also says that he had concerns regarding the origin and the roots of the words. For that, he relied on the same Angolan person and his own knowledge of the Greek and Arabian languages. Curiously, he adds that another Brazilian, the journalist and Engineer Francisco Pereira Dutra (1832–1867), found many similarities with several native Brazilian languages:

It seems very unlikely, but, unfortunately, Francisco Pereira Dutra died just three years later, in 1867, “condemned for the crime of ‘abuse of the free press’, and (...) did not survive the imprisonment conditions” (Corrado 2008: 9).

According to Chatelain (1894: 24), a new version of his “dictionary” was published in 1881, without his name, as an appendix to the second volume of De Benguella ás terras de Iácca by the Portuguese explorers Hermenegildo Capelo (1841-1917) and Roberto Ivens (1850–1898). In fact, there is a Vocabulario N’Bunda [Kimbundu Vocabulary] between pages 377 and 391(Capelo & Ivens 1881), but it does not mention any author, and it is, in fact, a Portuguese–Kimbundu vocabulary. Interestingly, both separate some prefixes, such as “cu‑” for the verbs, but the translation of the kimbundu terms is not often the same in Portuguese ([Oliveira] 1881). However, there are no other arguments to deny Chatelain’s hypothesis.

Joaquim Dias Cordeiro da Matta (1857-1894) was born in Angola and did not have any religious education apart from primary school. He died prematurely, at just 36, having been a poet and a journalist. He is known as the “father of Angolan Literature,” because of the themes of his poetry, which show his love for the Angolan territory and people, and mainly his veneration of Angolan or black women.

Héli Chatelain (1894: VIII) refers to Cordeiro da Matta in the following terms:

Chatelain also considers his Essay, the Kimbundu-Portuguese Dictionary, the Ensaio de diccionario kimbúndu-portuguez, “the best vocabulary of Ki-mbundu yet published” (Chatelain 1894: 25).

For Cordeiro da Matta, it is remarkable that Kimbundu had maintained its autonomy from the Portuguese, and retained the same language that had been spoken one hundred years ago, despite the Portuguese occupation which lasted for four centuries, contrasting with the Creoles of Cape Verde and S. Tomé e Príncipe:

Matta had a very progressive perspective concerning the neologisms from Portuguese, believing that it would be impossible not to include them, because the new social realities needed to have new vocabularies:

He gives the example “ngálûfu” (plural “jingálûfu”) (from the Portuguese noun “garfo” [“fork”]). Until the occupation by the Europeans, they just used the knife to eat, and, for that, they had the noun “pôku” (plural “Jipôko”) (Fernandes 2019: 663):

On the other hand, after the foundation of the Portuguese Province of the Congregatio Sancti Spiritus (C.S.Sp.) in 1867, the most relevant dictionaries and grammars of Angolan languages in the 20th century were written by the Holy Ghost Fathers. Father Adélio Torres Neiva mentions their extraordinary work in the description of the following native languages (some of them are currently classified as dialects): Fiote, Kioco, Kikongo, Kimbundu, Umbundu, Nganguela, Kwanyama, Kwangar, Dyiric, and Muila:

In effect, for instance, the Dicionário Etimológico Bundo-Português [Kimbundo-Portuguese Etymological Dictionary] (Lisboa 1951) by [João] Albino Alves [Manso], C.S.Sp. (1908-1956), is a remarkable piece of scholarship. It analyzes the etymology of almost 20,000 words, and provides an explanation of ca. 2,000 proverbs and 200 riddles. It was published in two heavy volumes, and had approximately 2,000 pages. In the prologue, Albino Alves stated that in the course of writing the dictionary, he consulted 60 books and opuscules, and provided data from his own knowledge, acquired through 14 years dedicated to learning Kimbundu, with direct contact with the native people. Nevertheless, he recognized that he had no help in the description of the etymology: “Quanto à parte etimológica, porém, não encontrei autoridade a que me encostasse, sendo obrigado a valer-me dos recursos pessoais e dominantemente de muita reflexão.” (Alves 1951: 6) [For the etymological part, however, I did not find the authority to which I could appeal, being forced to rely on my personal resources and mainly on a lot of thought.]

He was very inventive, inferring many hypotheses. For example, he stated that all words of Kimbundu derive from three onomatopoeic sounds or monosyllables: T, A, HU. The onomatopoeia TA was originally intended to transmit the idea of throwing up an object; the sound HU meant the interior of a person; and so on (Alves 1951: 10-12). He admits that his theory could be considered awkward by the reader: “Sei que o leitor está a rir, mas espero que o desenrolar do presente volume o venha a fazer pasmar, convencido da verdade deste fenómeno.” [I know that the reader is laughing, but I hope that the unfolding of this volume will astonish him, convinced of the truth of this phenomenon.] (Alves 1951: 10).

On the other hand, he explicitly stated that the dictionary had just 17,200 entries (Alves 1951: 13) and explained why he did not repeat all the words which have a known prefix in the following way:

Another relevant question is related to description of the tones. For the first time, an author explains that Kimbundu has four tones. He used impressive designations ―“alto,” “normal,” “baixo,” and “plangente” [high, normal, low, and plangent]― and he signed them with the Portuguese diacritics: an acute accent for the high tone; a grave accent for the low tone, and an umlaut for the plangent tone, or, as he said, “lembrando olhos chorosos de fadista apaixonado, sobre a vogal da sílaba de tom menor.” (Alves 1951: 6) [...remembering the tearful eyes of the passionate fado singer on the vowel of the lower tone syllable]. Nevertheless, he added that many times, European ears could not distinguish them:

4. UMBUNDU

Surprisingly, the first printed Umbundu dictionary was published in Boston in 1885, by two missionaries from the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, William Henry Sanders, A. B. C. F. M. (1856–1947), and William Edwards Fay, A. B. C. F. M. (1855–1907). It listed approximately 3,000 words over 76 pages, but, unfortunately, it had no linguistic explanations. It did not have an introductory chapter or a preface, or the division of words into prefixes and roots. However, it presented “oku” and “ka” as infinitive and negative prefixes respectively (Sanders & Fay 1885: 55; 42), and the suffixes “-vo” and “-ño” meaning “also” and “only” or “just” (Sanders & Fay 1885: 18; 22; 44; 48; 74).

Based mainly on Sanders and Fay’s vocabulary, a Portuguese layman, José Pereira do Nascimento (1861-1913), who was a medical officer in the Portuguese Royal Navy, published in 1894 a Portuguese-Umbundu dictionary (Nascimento 1894a) appended to his grammar of Umbundu or the Language of Benguela, and an Umbundu-Portuguese dictionary (Nascimento 1894b). This had approximately the same entries as Sanders and Fay’s dictionary, but it also had a few improvements: all prefixes, roots and suffixes were separated, and modern Africanists, as well older grammarians and lexicographers were quoted as authorities.

In 1972, in Luanda, the Spiritan José Francisco Valente, C.S.Sp. (1912-1993), published the Dicionário Português–Umbundu [Portuguese–Umbundu dictionary], eight years after he had published the Gramática Umbundu: A Língua do Centro de Angola [Umbundu Grammar: The Central Angolan Language] (Valente 1964). The dictionary was also authored by Priest Grégoire Le Guennec, C.S.Sp. (1875-1960), who had died twelve years before. His manuscript was, in fact, the main source (Le Guennec & Valente 1972). Le Guennec had dedicated 20 years to the composition of the dictionary, but the Portuguese language was not his mother tongue, and he was not comfortable with it. Other Spiritans had written Umbundu vocabularies, but they had never been printed, and the manuscript had been circulated amongst the Spritans, by Ernest Lecomte, C.S.Sp., and Albino Alves, C.S.Sp. In summary, Valente stated that the Priest Le Guennec gave him the manuscript in 1957, and improved and corrected it:

Like Albino Alves, Valente also introduces many neologisms, which, in his opinion, enrich the language and reflect the “ação civilizadora” [civilizing achievement] of the missionaries.

Another relevant issue was that Valente adopted phonetic orthography, like the other “new” Spiritans, but he did not accept the change of the Portuguese digraph <NH> instead of <NY> or <Ñ>, as António Silva and Albino Alves had:

5. NYANEKA

Approximately a century after the arrival of the Spiritans in Angola, António Joaquim da Silva, C.S.Sp. (1909-1995), published the Dicionário Português-Nhaneca (Lisboa 1966). Nyaneka is the language spoken in the southwest of Angola, mainly in the Huíla and Namibe provinces. Silva begins by explaining what is the Nyaneka language, along with its dialects and variants. He also clarifies that this dictionary was not written to be published, but rather just to help the younger brothers and missionaries, like many other missionaries from the same Congregation. Nevertheless, he presents many earlier works which it was based on, namely manuscripts and printed books.

Of the manuscripts, in addition to the dictionary of the priest Felix Villain, António Silva also refers that he used many other manuscripts, but it was impossible to know their authors, because all missionaries worked for the same purpose, and sometimes the notebook of a missionary was improved and corrected by other(s):

António Silva also used phonetic orthography and, for example, the Portuguese digraph <NH> was transcribed as <NY>, unlike Albino Alves, who transcribed it as <Ñ>.

6. CONCLUDING REMARKS

The missionaries of Portuguese Patronage studied and described some of the main native languages spoken in the current territory of Angola, namely Kikongo, Kimbundu, Umbundu, and Nyaneka. Nevertheless, the most studied by the Portuguese during the colonial period (1570–1975) were, initially, Kimbundu, and, more recently, Umbundu and Nyaneka. Surprisingly, however, the first printed Umbundu dictionary was written by two American missionaries from the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, William Henry Sanders, A. B. C. F. M. (1856–1947), and William Edwards Fay, A. B. C. F. M., (1855–1907). Many dictionaries, vocabularies, or wordlists circulated as manuscripts among the missionaries, and many of them are lost. Nevertheless, the oldest Bantu dictionary has survived in the National Library of Rome, and is waiting for a critical or, at least semidiplomatic, edition.

Since the last quarter of the 19th century, the role of the linguist–missionaries of the Congregation of the Holy Spirit (C.S.Sp.) should be highlighted; they agreed to replace the Capuchins (O. F. M. Cap.) in the current territory of Angola. As a result, the Spiritans founded the Portuguese Province in 1867. The main lexicographic works by Spiritans had just been published in the second half of the 20th century, approximately a century after the foundation of the Portuguese Province, and after the Concordat and Missionary Accord between the Holy See and the Portuguese Republic. Their works are, in effect, still relevant, and remain, even now, benchmarks of Angolan linguistic studies, used not only by foreign researchers, but mainly by Angolan scholars.

The dictionaries of Angolan native languages were written mainly by missionaries. However, there are, at least, three laymen who should be considered amongst the main Angolan lexicographers: the Brazilian Doctor Saturnino de Souza e Oliveira (1820-1871); the Angolan poet, writer, and journalist Joaquim Dias Cordeiro da Matta (1857-1894); and the Portuguese medical officer José Pereira do Nascimento (1861-1913).

Finally, the first lexicographers of unwritten languages, such as the African ones, used their own orthographic systems, based mainly on the orthography of each lexicographer’s mother tongue. However, in 1848, the Church Missionary Society published the Rules for reducing unwritten languages to alphabetical writing in Roman characters, with reference especially to the languages spoken in Africa. In 1855, they were replaced by the Standard Alphabet for Reducing Unwritten Languages and Foreign Graphic Systems to a Uniform Orthography in European Letters, and, in 1927, the International Institute of African Languages and Cultures, founded in London in 1926, published the Practical Orthography of African Languages ( Fernandes 2019). The “Portuguese” missionary and laymen lexicographers used their mother tongue orthography, but, for instance, Alves’ Kimbundu dictionary of 1951 used the Practical Orthography of African Languages, and he transcribed the Portuguese digraph <NH> as <NY>, and Albino Alves transcribed it as <Ñ>. However, Valente’s Umbundu dictionary of 1972 also adopted phonetic orthography, but he preserved the Portuguese digraph <NH>.