| This study asks what effect, if any, has the historic introduction of literacy through Christian missionary translations had on previously unwritten languages such as Luganda, which is spoken by the Baganda people in present-day Uganda. The Luganda verb, okusoma, meaning 'to read' or 'to pray,' reveals the historical connection among the Baganda between literacy and the vernacular Bible. Beyond producing one particular book, these translation projects often entail a much larger enterprise of linguistic documentation, literacy education, literature production and distribution. On a more intrinsic level, it also reaffirmed Luganda by associating it with the perceived prestige of being a written language and a vehicle for the holy.;The contemporary attention on the accelerating threats to the world's linguistic diversity suggest as much because literacy headlines the prescriptions for preserving the use of minority languages. What is often overlooked is that, the priority of working through local languages and the process of translation frequently subverts missionaries into vernacular agents. At the same time, it places literacy and Christianity itself on African tongues for African hands to wield. In fact, the first generation of Christian Baganda readily grasped literacy and from the late-nineteenth century onward composed in their own language a relatively impressive body of newspapers, books, diaries and correspondences on which this study relies heavily. The missionary investment and the response of the Baganda to the option to read and write in their 'mother tongue' has played a large role in the language's long-standing prominence within Uganda and its resilience especially against the colonial imposition of Swahili. |
