Africa-Press – Angola. The nationalist Manuel Rodrigues Boal, 88, presents today, at 3 pm, in the auditorium of the BAI Academy, in Morro Bento, Luanda, the book entitled “Contribution to the knowledge of Kimbundu”.
The work, which is the author’s first, aims to encourage knowledge and research into Angolan culture, the promotion of national languages and their dissemination to present and future generations.
Over 133 pages, the author evokes the historical origins and dialectical and regional variations of Kimbundu, underlining the value of studies previously carried out by specialists in the language, such as António de Assis Júnior and Joaquim Dias Cordeiro da Matta, and more recently by José Domingos Pedro and Francisco da Silva Xavier, in particular.
Manuel Rodrigues Boal is a doctor specializing in Pediatrics in France, in 1968, and was born in Muxima, Kissama, where he was born in May 1934.
According to the author, this work intends to fill a gap which is precisely “the difficulty in finding reliable sources for the knowledge and dissemination of the language, but also presents suggestions on its more correct spelling and pronunciation”.
“It is our intention that the ‘Contribution to the knowledge of Kimbundu’ help this language to expand and gain more dynamism, with emphasis on speakers in its areas of influence, that is, in the provinces of Luanda, Bengo, Malanje, Cuanza-Norte and Cuanza-Sul”, emphasizes the author.
Manuel Rodrigues Boal attended primary school at Colégio 28 de Maio, in Dondo, and secondary school at Liceu Nacional Salvador Correia, in Luanda.
In June 1961, he interrupted his medical training in Lisbon to take part in the flight of students from the former Portuguese colonies and join the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) in Léopoldville, now Kinshasa. There, he completed the Medicine course at the University of Lovanium, in 1962, participating, simultaneously, in the activities of the Angolan Voluntary Body for Refugee Assistance (CVAAR), with other Medicine finalists, including João Baptista Vieira Lopes, Carlos Pestana Heineken , Edmundo Rocha, Rui Alberto de Carvalho, Manuel Videira and the veterans and doctors Américo Boavida, Eduardo Macedo dos Santos, Hugo de Menezes and Mário Afonso de Almeida “Kasesa”.
His work “Contribution to the knowledge of Kimbundu”, with 133 pages, comprises two distinct parts: a first with sections related to the compilation of grammar elements and a second in which he summarizes the system of commercial relations based on the exchange of products and the process of counting money in Kimbundu installed in the 17th century, after the rule of Lubongo, Zimbu and Cauri.
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