Kenneth Crosby (1904–1998) was a British

Wesleyan Wesleyan theology, otherwise known as Wesleyan– Arminian theology, or Methodist theology, is a theological tradition in Protestant Christianity based upon the ministry of the 18th-century evangelical reformer brothers John Wesley and Charles W ...

missionary, a Bible translator and language scholar, who worked in

Sierra Leone Sierra Leone,)]. officially the Republic of Sierra Leone, is a country on the southwest coast of West Africa. It is bordered by Liberia to the southeast and Guinea surrounds the northern half of the nation. Covering a total area of , Sierra ...

. He is best known for his work in the

Mende language Mende (''Mɛnde yia'') is a major language of Sierra Leone, with some speakers in neighboring Liberia and Guinea. It is spoken by the Mende people and by other ethnic groups as a regional lingua franca in southern Sierra Leone. In southern Sier ...

. Crosby was born on 12 May 1904 at

Briton Ferry Briton Ferry ( cy, Llansawel) is a town and community in the county borough of Neath Port Talbot, Wales. The Welsh name may indicate that the church, ''llan'', is protected from the wind, ''awel''. Alternatively, ''Sawel'' may be a derivative ...

, near

Neath Neath (; cy, Castell-nedd) is a market town and Community (Wales), community situated in the Neath Port Talbot, Neath Port Talbot County Borough, Wales. The town had a population of 50,658 in 2011. The community of the parish of Neath had a po ...

in South Wales. He graduated with a BD degree from the

University of London The University of London (UoL; abbreviated as Lond or more rarely Londin in post-nominals) is a federal public research university located in London, England, United Kingdom. The university was established by royal charter in 1836 as a degree ...

in 1927, then a BA in philosophy from the same university. He left for Sierra Leone in 1929, though returned to Britain temporarily in 31, where he was ordained and also married to his fiancee Dorothy. In Sierra Leone, his service included being a part of a team that translating the Bible into Mende, helping to found the Bunumbu Press, and serving as the first principal of Bunumbu Union College (now Bunumbu Teachers College). In 1939, he was awarded a PhD degree from the University of London for his dissertation ''A study of the Mende Language''. He wrote of the Mende language, "I was brought up on the classics and had been taught that classical Greek was the most perfect instrument of speech ever devised. I accepted this, of course, unthinkingly and believed it implicitly until I met the Mende language. But then I began to think differently. I marvelled at its incredible beauty, its wonderful cadences, its skillful nuances and the deeper I went the more I learned to wonder" (Tuchscherer 1998:220).

Publications

*1944. ''An Introduction to the Study of Mende.'' Cambridge University Press.

References

* Tuchscherer, Konrad. 1998. Kenneth Hubert Crosby (1904-1998): pioneer of the Mende language. ''Journal of African Cultural Studies'' 11.2: 217-220. 1904 births 1998 deaths Alumni of the University of London Linguists Translators of the Bible into Mande languages Methodist missionaries in Sierra Leone Welsh Methodist missionaries British expatriates in Sierra Leone 20th-century British translators Missionary linguists {{Mande-lang-stub