Bishop Ajayi Crowther was not your everyday average Joe. He was a brainy polyglot. He could speak Yorùbá, Nupe, Igbo, Latin and English language fluently while he was averagely fluent in some other languages of West Africa. The argument that he spent only two weeks in Onitsha and therefore couldn’t have mastered Igbo to the point of rendering it in written form holds no water unless you are an irredeemable ethnic dung-beetle.
There are Yorùbá in the Alaba market in Lagos who have never been to Igbo land but can speak Igbo fluently. Crowther was sold to slavery at age 11 and spent his teenage years among different ethnic groups that were dumped in Sierra Leone. I want you to imagine a polyglot who could speak Yorùbá and Nupe at 11 yrs, how he will capture and learn other languages he came in contact with easily. In his memoir, he said he noticed the change in his native language and the language of Ẹgba and Ìjẹ̀bú as he was being brought to the coast of Lagos though he could still pick what they were saying. That sort of kid would excel in language at an advanced age no doubt.
The Crowther family that eventually adopted him and gave him their family name saw his brilliance and that was why he was sent to school at that time before missionary took over his education. The Christian education he received exposed him to Latin which he mastered very well. Would you say because he never lived in Rome, he ought not to have mastered Latin?
About pioneering the translation of Igbo writing. Let me ask you something, when you have an idea about something, you start it and along the line, you call people of similar interest to join you. Eventually, the project became successful and it was published in your name because you started it and completed it with the help of others, will you be denied full credit for such work?
Bishop Ajayi Crowther translated the Bible into Yorùbá piece by piece and he collaborated with many people along the line. One of them is Henry Townsend (Iwe Iroyin Yoruba Publisher) who lived in Abẹ́òkúta. He consulted natives who spoke the language better and that was why the first Bible in Yorùbá was heavy with Ẹ̀gbá dialect even though Ajayi was an Ọ̀yọ́ man.
Bishop Ajayi Crowther was nothing short of extraordinary—a true polyglot and intellectual. Fluently navigating Yorùbá, Nupe, Igbo, Latin, and English, his linguistic mastery was unparalleled. Dismissing his ability to render Igbo in written form based on a brief stay in Onitsha undermines the brilliance of his work. Let’s not let ethnic biases cloud the remarkable legacy of a man who bridged cultures through language and education.
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