The way you tell them

Abstract

The primers and dictionaries that were produced in Southern Rhodesia at the start of the white occupation for native English speakers to learn the African vernaculars are informative as well as entertaining to the modern historian. This paper uses phrase books and dictionaries from the 1890s to the 1930s to ask two major questions: Who needed to speak ‘correct’ chiShona? What did they want to say? It finds that it was probably the staff of the Native Affairs Department and the missions who had an interest in defining and acquiring a written and standardised version of the vernacular. Significantly, it is the things they did not want to say, rather than those they did, which provide the most interest to the modern historian. The primers and dictionaries are revealed as a form of communication within the white communities as much as a means of facilitating communication between whites and Africans. Their failure to engage with the African world‐view and language — beyond what was required to communicate policy and theology — has had long‐term consequences for the contemporary descendants of the Native Affairs Department and the missions.