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    Abuku da Kukhongota Kerenkeni
The 1662 Book of Common Prayer in Ronga

 

Ronga is a Bantu language spoken primarily in the far south of Mozambique, but also in adjacent South Afica. It is spoken by over 700,000 people and is very similar to the much more widely spoken Tsonga language. The Ronga people were evangelized by Anglican missionaries primarily through Ronga men who came from Mozambique to work in South Africa.

The text given here was published by the SPCK in 1920, and contains most, but not all of the 1662 Book of Common Prayer. It is listed in David Griffiths' Bibliography of the Book of Common Prayer as 141:1. Since there are no prayers in this book for the king or the royal family, one can assume that it was intended to be used in Mozambique in the Diocese of Limpopo. This book was replaced by a newer BCP in 1988.

The Ronga alphabet as used in this book is basically Latin but additionally contains a number of unusual diacritical marks. These include d, r, and t with a dot under, n with a dot over, and b with a dash under. These are part of the Unicode Latin Extended Additional page, and the only commonly available fonts which include these characters are Arial Unicode MS (for Windows) and Helvetica (for the Mac); accordingly, these are the fonts used in this work. If you see boxes where there should be letters in the Table of Contents below, you either do not have either of these fonts enabled (they are part of the standard Windows & Mac distributions), or you are using an older or less capable browser; the pages have been tested using current versions of Internet Explorer and Firefox. We also have the entire book as PDF images. There is text "behind" the images, but this has not been corrected And undoubtedly contains many errors.

Ronga as currently written omits most of these diacritical marks, and presumably the text if written today would be spelled rather differently than is presented here.
 


 

Cover of Ronga BCP

Title page, Ronga BCP

ABUKU ḌA KUKHONGOTA

KEṚEKENI
 

NI ḌA KUYENTŠA MA-SAKRAMENTO

ŜANGA H'EŜI YIMISIWIKI HI

CHURCH OF ENGLAND

 

KUṄWE NI ŜIYIMḆELELO ŜA KA DAVIDA, NI
NDELA YA KUḆEKA
ABA-DIAKONI NI KUYIMISA ABA-PRISTE
HI SI-ONGA

 

[PARTS OF THE BOOK OF COMMON PRAYER IN THE
RONGA LANGUAGE]

 

LONDON
SOCIETY FOR PROMOTING
CHRISTIAN KNOWLEDGE
1920
 


 

TABLE OF CONTENTS

1. aŠikhongoto ša Šimišweni
      Morning Prayer
2. aŠikhongoto ša Šidambyeni
    Evening Prayer
3. Litania
   Litany
4. aŜikhongoto ni Ŝinkhenso
    Prayers & Thanksgivings
5. aMakolekta, ma-Epistola, ni ma-Evangeli
    Collects, Epistles & Gospels
6. aŠilalelo ša Hosi
    Holy Communion
7. aŠihena ša kubapatisa baṭongwana a Keṛekeni
    Public Baptism of Infants
8. aŠihena ša kubapatisa baṭongwana andlwini
    Private Baptism of Infants
9. aŠihena ša kubapatisa la'ba kuliki
    Batism of Adults
10. aŠihena ša kutiyisa
   Confirmation
11. aŠiyimiselo ša kuyentša Nkhubu.
    Marriage
12. aŠiyimiselo ša kuhungatcla bababyi
    Visitation of the Sick
13. aŠiyimiselo ša kuyentšela bababyi aŠilalelo.
    Communion of the Sick
11. aŠiyimiselo ša kulahla abafi
    Burial
15. Kutlangela ka babasati anṭhaku ka kuphuluka kwabu
    Churching of women
16. aŜikhongoto ša kutirisiwa hi siku ḍa kusungula ḍa Lente
    Comination
17. Amapsalma
    Selection of Psalms

 
Read or download the entire book as PDF
(21MB).

 

 

Web author: Charles Wohlers U. S. EnglandScotlandIrelandWalesCanadaWorld