Editing Kongo language (section)

== Writing ==
[[File:Kikongo-m.jpg|thumb|right|The [[Hail Mary]] in Kikongo.]]

Kongo was the earliest [[Bantu languages|Bantu]] language to be written in Latin characters. Portuguese created a dictionary in Kongo, the first of any Bantu language. A catechism was produced under the authority of Diogo Gomes, who was born in 1557 in Kongo to [[Portugal|Portuguese]] parents and became a [[Jesuit]] priest. No version of that survives today.

In 1624, Mateus Cardoso, another Portuguese Jesuit, edited and published a Kongo translation of the Portuguese catechism compiled by Marcos Jorge. The preface says that the translation was done by Kongo teachers from [[São Salvador do Congo|São Salvador]] (modern [[Mbanza-Kongo|Mbanza Kongo]]) and was probably partially the work of Félix do Espírito Santo (also a Kongo).<ref>François Bontinck and D. Ndembi Nsasi, ''Le catéchisme kikongo de 1624. Reeédtion critique'' (Brussels, 1978)</ref>

The dictionary was written in about 1648 for the use of [[Order of Friars Minor Capuchin|Capuchin]] missionaries. The principal author was Manuel Robredo, a secular priest from Kongo (after he became a Capuchin, he was named Francisco de São Salvador). The back of this dictionary includes a two-page sermon written in Kongo. The dictionary has some 10,000 words.

In the 1780s, French Catholic missionaries to the [[Kingdom of Loango|Loango]] coast created additional dictionaries. Bernardo da Canecattim published a word list in 1805.

[[Baptist]] missionaries who arrived in Kongo in 1879 (from Great Britain) developed a modern orthography of the language.

American missionary [[W. Holman Bentley]] arranged for his ''Dictionary and Grammar of the Kongo Language'' to be published by the [[University of Michigan]] in 1887. In the preface, Bentley gave credit to Nlemvo, an African, for his assistance. He described "the methods he used to compile the dictionary, which included sorting and correcting 25,000 slips of paper containing words and their definitions."<ref>{{Cite web
| title = Dictionary and Grammar of the Kongo Language, as Spoken at San Salvador, the Ancient Capital of the Old Kongo Empire, West Africa: Preface
| work = [[World Digital Library]]
| access-date = 2013-05-23
| url = http://www.wdl.org/en/item/2533/
}}</ref> Eventually W. Holman Bentley, with the special assistance of João Lemvo, produced a complete [[Christian Bible]] in 1905.

The [[Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights|Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights]] has published a translation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Fiote.