(O)Myènè Bible History (3)

**List: (O)Myènè Ministry the Bible ( the Bible ) (O)Myènè... MPONGWE. "I.--GEOGRAPHICAL EXTENT AND STATISTICS. MPONGWE is the language of a people (heretofore generally known as the Pongos) who for more than two centuries have acted in the character of factors in carrying on a traffic between European traders and the tribes of the interior.   Mpongwe towns are built on both banks of the Gaboon, but the princi- pal location of the people is a small tract of country at the mouth of that river, just below the Bight of Biafra, and about twenty miles north of the equator.   In number the Mpongwes do not exceed 6000 or 7000, but their language is spoken at Cape Lopez and St. Catherine, and likewise to some distance in the interior.   Altogether the number of individuals who employ the Mpongwe language is supposed to amount to at least 200,000.    The Mpongwes are a peaceable and friendly people, and, though still in a state of semi-barbarism, are shrewder and more intelligent than most of the neighbouring nations.   Their government has the form of a monarchy, but the power is vested in popular assemblies.   Slavery and polygamy prevail among them, as among other African states.   They have no system of religion whatever, no priesthood, no religious meetings, no worship or sacrifice to idols; the only sentiment approximating to religious superstition which is dominant among them is a strange feeling of veneration which they cherish towards old earthen jars. II.--CHARACTERISTICS OF THE LANGUAGE.    This language is closely allied to the Kisuaheli, spoken on the opposite side of the continent, and near the same parallel of latitude.   Striking verbal and grammatical affinities connect both these lan- guages with the grand family of languages pervading all Africa south of the equator.   On the other hand, no resemblances prevail between Mpongwe and the other languages of the western coast spoken north of the supposed Mountains of the Moon.   In the possession of a part of speech called the definite pronoun, the Mpongwe resembles the Polynesian language: this pronoun, frequently employed in the place of other pronouns, is also used in the formation of the infinitive, and in the inflection of nouns and adjectives; and it likewise occasionally subserves the office of prepositions, and of other parts of speech.   In respect of verbal inflections, the Mpongwe language is particularly rich and copious.   There are, we are told, five simple conjugations, formed by final changes, which give the verb a frequentative, causative, relative, and indefinite sense.   Each of these forms is inflected through all the moods, tenses, and voices: negative and passive forms are also in frequent use; and beyond these are numerous shades of meaning, communicated by auxiliary particles and negative intonations.   Mpongwe nouns are divided into four classes, according to the formation of the plural, called declensions, though they have neither gender nor case.   The first division contains nouns beginning with one or more consonants, that make their plural by prefixing i or si; e.g. nyare, cow, inyare or sinyare, cows.   The second division consists of nouns that form the plural by dropping their initial e; e.g. egara, chest, pl. gara, chests. The third division is that of nouns that change their initial i into a; e.g. idƒmbe, sheep, pl. adƒmbe, sheep.   The fourth class comprises nouns that change their initial o into i or a; e.g. olonda, nut, ilonda, nuts; onomi, man, anomi, men.   Adjectives form their plural like substantives.   Yet the American mies. stationed in the Mpongwe country were less struck by the remarkable copiousness of this language than by its almost unlimited flexibility, its philosophical arrangement, and its complete sub- jection to euphonical principles.   "Its expansions, contractions, and inflections," they remarked, "though exceedingly numerous, and having apparently special reference to euphony, are all governed by gram- matical rules, which seem to be well established in the minds of the people, and which enable them to express their ideas with the utmost precision.   How a language so soft, so plaintive, so pleasant to the ear, and at the same time so copious and methodical in its inflections, should have originated, or how the people are enabled to retain its multifarious principles so distinctly in their minds, as to express their ideas with almost unvarying precision and uniformity, are points which we do not pretend to settle."    Various detached portions of the Scriptures have been translated into Mpongwe by the mies. of the American Board of Missions, and several printed editions of these portions have been issued at the expense of that Society.   No less than 8000 books in the Mpongwe language (among which, how- ever, were elementary works on Christian instruction as well as Scriptural portions) were printed at the mission-press during the year 1846: the pages of these copies were altogether 155,000 in number. We possess no recent intelligence concerning the progress which the American mies. may now have made in the translation of the New Testament into Mpongwe."--The Bible of Every Land. (1860, Second Edition)   Samuel Bagster   [Info only] MPONGWE.--1860   S. Bagster   [Info only: n.d. Luke 15:11-24 unknown.] MPONGWE.--1860   S. Bagster   [Info only: n.d. Matthew 5:1-12 unknown.]

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