Bishop Steere and Kiswahili

THE name of Steere is best known to people living in East Africa as the author of “Swahili Exercises'’ which have helped so many of' them to master the lingua franca of this part of the world. If they happen to know also that he was a pioneer in East Africa, they must often wonder how he succeeded in writing down the language with such remarkable results in those early days, while they, even with the help of modern versions of his “Exercises” and Dictionary, find the task of learning it no light one.Edward Steere was born in London in 1829, the son of a barrister. He too was intended for the Law and in 1850 he became an LL.D. of London University, winning the gold medal for the highest proficiency in legal knowledge in his year. Later he abandoned the Law for work among London’s poor and eventually was ordained a priest in the Church of England. From 1863 until his death in 1882 he was a member of the Universities’ Mission to Central Africa, first as a priest and then as its third Bishop. He has earned a place among the great pioneers of East Africa not only for his work on Swahili and other languages but also as a great missionary and traveller, as the architect and builder of Zanzibar Cathedral, and as the liberator and friend of slaves. As a child, Steere had shown great interest in the languages and customs of other countries and, while he was studying for higher examinations in Law, was able to find time to learn Greek. Latin, French, German. Italian, Spanish and most remarkable of all—a smattering of Chinese.It must not be thought that Steere was the founder of written Swahili. Previous work on the language had already been done by Dr. T\rapf, a member of the Church Missionary Society wdio came to Zanzibar in 1842 and then settled near Mombasa with a Mr. Rebmann. Together they produced a Swahili and Kinika dictionary in 595 quarto pages and tentative translations of the New Testament and the Prayer Book.