2020
XX, 207 pp.
5 photos, numerous graphs, tables and charts, 4 appendices
Text language: English
From the preface:
We present here an edition of the first extensive description of Mambila (a language of the Adamawa Region, Cameroon) ever written, the product of an eminent German Africanist of the middle part of the 20th century, Professor Emmi Kähler-Meyer (30 Nov 1903 – 1 June 1998). The work represented her Habilitationsschrift – she subsequently went on to have a long career at the University of Hamburg – and was published in 1939–1940 in three parts, under the modest title ‘Mambila Study’, in volume 30 of Afrika und Übersee. (A reminder of the murky origins of African studies as a field is the fact that in 1939 the journal was still entitled “Zeitschrift für Eingeborenen-Sprachen”, or ‘Journal of Native Languages’.)
Fundamentally, our edition is a translation; we have modernized only a few features that seemed essential, such as the form of bibliographical references, the choice of phonetic symbols, and in some cases the technical terminology. However, we have also added extensive commentaries based on current knowledge about Mambila, together with an introductory summary of more recent scholarship on various aspects of the history and ethnography of the Mambila people and their homeland.