Sigismund Koelle
Encyclopedia
Sigismund Wilhelm Kölle was a German missionary, and pioneer scholar of African languages
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After training in a missionary house in Basle, he transferred in 1845 to the Church Missionary Society based in London. From 1847 he was in Sierra Leone
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There he collected a large sample of linguistic material, some of it from freed slaves. His major work Polyglotta Africana
from 1854 began the serious study by European scholars of a large range of African languages
African languages
There are over 2100 and by some counts over 3000 languages spoken natively in Africa in several major language families:*Afro-Asiatic spread throughout the Middle East, North Africa, the Horn of Africa, and parts of the Sahel...
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After training in a missionary house in Basle, he transferred in 1845 to the Church Missionary Society based in London. From 1847 he was in Sierra Leone
Sierra Leone
Sierra Leone , officially the Republic of Sierra Leone, is a country in West Africa. It is bordered by Guinea to the north and east, Liberia to the southeast, and the Atlantic Ocean to the west and southwest. Sierra Leone covers a total area of and has an estimated population between 5.4 and 6.4...
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There he collected a large sample of linguistic material, some of it from freed slaves. His major work Polyglotta Africana
Polyglotta Africana
Polyglotta Africana is a study written by the German missionary Sigismund Wilhelm Koelle in 1854 in which he compared 156 African languages...
from 1854 began the serious study by European scholars of a large range of African languages