Roy Clive Abraham

Roy Clive Abraham (16 December, 1890, Melbourne, Australia - 22 June 1963, Hendon, London) was a key figure in African language scholarship during the twentieth century. He worked for over thirty years on a wide range of disparate languages.

Education

* University College School
* Clifton College, Bristol
* Various establishments in Germany

From 1923 to 1924 he was at Balliol College, Oxford. He received a first-class honours degree in Arabic and Persian; he asked to be examined in Ethiopic, but no examiner was available. He took a certificate in anthropology from University College, London in 1927, and a diploma in (classical) Arabic from the School of Oriental Studies in 1930.

Career

In and after World War I (1914-23), Abraham was in the British army in Arabia and on the north-western frontier with the Indian army.

From 1925 to 1944, he worked for the administrative service of the northern provinces of Nigeria. He researched the local languages, and assisted George Percival Bargery [ [http://www.mundus.ac.uk/cats/4/926.htm School of Oriental and African Studies Library: Bargery, George Percival ] ] in (date needed) to compile the latter's monumental and authoritative Hausa-English Dictionary (1934). In his "Principles of Hausa" (1934), he simplified Bargery's six-tone system to the correct three-tone system for Hausa.

In this period, he also published "The Grammar of Tiv" (1933) and "The Principles of Idoma" (1935), the first detailed linguistic description of an eastern Kwa language. Abraham's grammars and dictionaries represented major descriptive and analytical contributions to the study of African languages. In 1941-2, he taught Hausa to soldiers in the Royal West African frontier force. Later in World War II, he served in Ethiopia, teaching Amharic and Somali; he was also based in Kenya, South Africa, France, and Italy, and with the British military mission in Moscow, being promoted to major.

In 1945 Abraham was awarded a Leverhulme research fellowship to research the languages of Ethiopia and Eritrea (including Amharic and Ge'ez). In 1946 he failed to succeed Bargery as lecturer in Hausa at the School of Oriental and African Studies. However, in 1948 he was appointed to a new lectureship in Amharic; he also taught Tigrinya and began research into Berber, Oromo, and Somali. His "Dictionary of Hausa" was published in 1949 and "The Principles of Somali" in 1951. He retired in 1951. In 1952, Abraham embarked on a study of Yoruba. His "Dictionary of Modern Yoruba" appeared in 1958.

A commemorative volume in honour of his outstanding contribution to the understanding of African languages was published in 1992.

References

* Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
* R. G. Armstrong, ‘Roy Clive Abraham, 1890-1963’, Journal of West African Languages, 1/1 (1964), 49-53
* P. E. H. Hair, ‘A bibliography of R. C. Abraham - linguist and lexicographer’, Journal of West African Languages, 2/1 (1965), 63-6
* P. J. Jaggar, ed., Papers in honour of R. C. Abraham (1890-1963) (1992)