Editing Polyglotta Africana (section)

==The transcription==
It was Koelle's aim not to use any previously published material on the languages he was writing down, but to achieve uniformity by having one person using a single phonetic system for every language. The orthography he eventually chose, after discussions in London, was not that of [[Karl Richard Lepsius]] (as is sometimes claimed), since it had not yet been published, but was based on a short document issued in 1848 by [[Henry Venn (Church Missionary Society)|Henry Venn]] of the [[Church Mission Society|Church Missionary Society]] entitled ''Rules for Reducing Unwritten Languages to Alphabetical Writing in Roman Characters With Reference Specially to the Languages Spoken in Africa''.<ref>Spencer (1966), pp. 88–95, where Venn's document is quoted in full.</ref> The aim of this was to produce a simple practical system of orthography for teaching purposes with the use of as few diacritics as possible. Koelle, however, sought a more accurate phonetic system, and added diacritics. He retained seven of the eight vowels of Venn's system (''i, e, ẹ, a, ọ, o, u'', omitting ''ạ'' as in "but") but added length marks, a dot for nasalisation, and an accent to indicate the prominent syllable. (Unlike in Lepsius's alphabet, the dotted ''ẹ'' and ''ọ'' are open not closed sounds.) He modified Venn's alphabet by writing ''dṣ'' for the sound of "judge" or "church" (apparently confusing these two), and n followed by a dot (''n˙'') for the "ng" sound of "sing". When Koelle learnt of Lepsius's alphabet in 1854, he made immediate use of it in his Kanuri grammar, in which he wrote:

:"I much regret that this System was not propounded sooner, so that I might also have adopted it in my Vei-Grammar and Polyglotta Africana. Happily, however, the Orthography which I employed in those books already so nearly approaches the System of Prof. Lepsius, as to only require some minor alterations."<ref>Solleveld (2020), §2.</ref>