ABSTRACT
In about the year 1834 Duala Bukale, an inhabitant of Jandu in northern Liberia in West Africa, experienced a life-changing dream. In it an unknown man approached him and offered him a book. Finding he could not read it, Duala asked the stranger how he could gain access to its mysteries. The dream figure then bent down and wrote with his finger on the ground, saying as he did so ‘Look, the sign I’ (pronounced ‘eye’). Then he wrote close to it another sign, saying, ‘And that means, na. Now Duala, read both together!’ Duala did so and discovered that he had just, for the very first time, read the word ina, meaning ‘Come here’, in his mother tongue, Vai (Koelle, 1849: 22).
