PREFACE. 



The task of reducing tlie Yoruba language to writing was begun aliout twenty 

 years ago in Sierra Leone, by a youthful Yoruba named Adz4ye, since widely known 

 and much beloved under the title of the Rev. Samuel Crowther. His first Grammar 

 and Vocabulary exhibited a rude attempt to write the Yoruba language in English 

 letters without diacritical points or tone-marks. After the Church Missionary 

 Society had agreed on a more appropriate alphabet for the Yoruba, Mr. Crowther 

 prepared a revised edition of his work, which was published in London in 1852. 

 This Vocabulary, which contains " nearly three thousand vocables," is the basis of 

 the present enlarged Dictionary. 



The grammatical principles here presented have been deduced from a multitude 

 of sentences taken chiefly from the lips of the natives. With the assistance of 

 Professor W. W. Turner, of Washington, to whom the work was referred by the 

 Smithsonian Institution, the whole has been carefully revised ; the orthography of 

 the language has been somewhat modified for the purpose of reducing it to a more 

 harmonious system ; and the entire Grammar has been re-arranged and re-written 

 so as to present the phenomena of the language, in accordance with the require- 

 ments of modern philology, as nearly as practicable from a native point of view. 

 It is simply justice to say that whatever merits it may possess, as to plan and 

 details, are due to that accomplished scholar. 



T. J. B. 



Greeneshord' , Ga., June, 1858, 



